Rohan Dennis column: Will Clarke was the standout rider for stage 1 of the Tour Down Under
STAGE 1 proved to be slow going until the pace of the final lap, writes BMC star Rohan Dennis in his exclusive column.
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THE opening stage from Port Adelaide to Lyndoch seemed to take forever until the bunch really got moving on the final lap on Tuesday.
It was a long and slow day in the saddle and sometimes that’s harder than when we’re going flat out.
The last lap was actually the easiest of them all because we started to speed up to try to catch Will Clarke.
When you’re cruising along you’ve got too much time to think and you notice a lot more of any muscle pain you might have but it was good to get the race under way and get through unscathed.
I was about mid-bunch at the finish, right in the middle of the peloton thinking it’s not really worth being involved in the sprint so it was important to stay out of trouble.
I wrote on Tuesday that it would be interesting to see if the other teams expected us to ride on the front to bring back the breakaway on Stage 1 given we are targeting the general classification but it didn’t happen.
The other teams joked about it but we didn’t ride on the front all day and it would have been a bit rich if we were asked to ride today knowing we had no chance of winning the sprint, and all the teams know that.
Everyone is pretty fair when it comes to this sort of thing and they know that we’ll have the pressure on us later in the week.
It was a super-ride by Will Clarke. I thought he might stay away until we got to Whispering Wall because we still couldn’t see him and the time checks were saying 1min 15secs and I know what he’s like, he did it on Stirling in 2012 and they couldn’t catch him.
We thought he possibly might not get caught but once he was in sight it was all over.
It was a big ride from Will and pretty impressive, he showed his strength again.
Coming into Stirling for Stage 2 on Wednesday we have to make sure we’re up the front in the final. It’s more of a GC sprinter day.
Someone like Jay McCarthy, Nathan Haas, Diego Ulissi, Rui Costa and Peter Sagan we’re really going to have to watch them and pull something out. It might be a Gerro kind of day and it would be great to get him up there and make sure minimal time is given away to other guys.
I can have a crack as well but it all just depends on my run into the finish.
Originally published as Rohan Dennis column: Will Clarke was the standout rider for stage 1 of the Tour Down Under