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A lumpy finish, a tight GC battle and a team determined not to watch the race they’d walked away with every year slip from their grasp; Stage 3 of the Santos Women’s Tour Down Under was always going to be hard fought.
Three Mitchelton-Scott riders were lined up within 25 seconds of general category leader Katrin Garfoot (UniSA-Australia), who won the race when she was with the team in 2016. That meant it was no surprise when Australia’s only UCI listed team road aggressively on the final road stage, pretty much as soon as they set off from the start line at The Bend Motorsport Park.
For a second stage in a row the winds and rain came to play, with Mitchelton-Scott following the pattern of using the cross winds to break up the field. However it kept coming back together, at least until 2015 world time trial champion Linda Villumsen (Team Virtu Cycling) took off about 40 kilometres into the race. The peloton appeared content to let her go and the gap grew quickly.
Once it had blown out to over five minutes the threat of her staying away and riding away with the stage and tour seemed all too real. That’s why as the 122.4 kilometre race shifted into its final third, riders were shooting off the front frantically trying to jump the gap. When Mitchelton Scott’s top GC contenders, Lucy Kennedy and Annemiek van Vleuten, got among the action and managed to get in a break that left Garfoot behind the dual medallist at the 2017 World Road Championships was forced to chase. The nation’s best time-trialler made the catch, but then it was Spratt’s turn to go and now Garfoot no longer had the energy to follow.
Spratt took off with Cylance Pro Cycling’s Lauren Stephens and then it wasn’t long before the sole leader turned into a trio out the front. With little more than 20 kilometres to go, Villumsen fell by the wayside, worn down by the fresh legs of Spratt and Stephens.
From then Stephens stuck to Spratt’s wheel till the final push. Spratt then determinedly grasped the win she’d been planning since her December course recconnaissance. The two-time Australian road champion crossed the Hahndorf finish line seven seconds ahead of Stephen’s to pull out a 29 second advantage to the American rider on the GC. Grace Brown (Holden-Team Gusto) pulled away from the field and time-trialled her way to third on the stage and fifth in the overall standings. Garfoot rolled in fourth, to slip to third on the overall leaderboard.
With just a criterium ahead to complete the Tour, Spratt now looks set to walk away with the overall victory for a second year in a row, continuing Mitchelton-Scott’s dominance of Australia’s four day tour.
Here’s the Stage 3 highlights video from the Santos Women’s Tour:
https://www.facebook.com/tourdownunder/videos/10160089598665160/
Photo Gallery
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- Rolling into get ready at a dusty and windy start at The Bend Motorsport Park.
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- UniSA-Australia, the nation’s first women’s national team to race at the Santos Women’s Tour, had a job on their hands to defend the ochre jersey, but a powerful bunch of riders to do it. Usually competitors on different teams, this time they huddled together in the team bus to quickly run through the conditions, what to watch for and who would take what role. They were a team with a plan … now they just had to get out there and see if they could make it work.
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- A young New Zealand national team head back from sign on.
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- A roller coaster ride for Holden Team Gusto. Last week they were celebrating a successful Australian National Championships and this week they were heading into the third stage of the tour down half their team after a crash on the first day took its toll.
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- The long way around or the short way – barrier jumping.
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- Giorgia Bronzini (Cylance Pro Cycling) looking ahead to the final stage crit.
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- Off and racing.
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- Clearing the way for the peloton with a bit of teamwork.
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- Murray Bridge and the group is back together after earlier being split in the crosswinds.
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- Finding the best view of the race as it passes through the small country towns of South Australia.
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- Villumsen decides its time to go. The plan was to just try and get up ahead a bit so she was out the front when the field split up, not to be out alone in the winds for quite so long. “Nobody chased at all which gave me a huge gap and then I thought I might as well keep going until someone gets there,” Villumsen told Ella CyclingTips. “That turned out to be a little longer than expected.”
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- Spread across the road, the pressure isn’t on yet.
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- Feed zone.
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- Oops!
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- And then the pressure was on.
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- Spratt and Stephens are on the move. “I think she knew it was going to be a hard battle but I have so much respect for Kat. She’s such a top competitor and I knew she’d keep fighting,” said Spratt. “I could see in her body language at that point that she was tired from bridging back … so I just knew it was the best time to go.”
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- On the chase but not able to close the gap.
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- Spratt and Stephens quickly caught Villumsen but with tired legs, she could hold on in the last 20 kilometres. So it was Spratt and Stephens that came into the final climb together.
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- Spratt on her way to winning the 2018 edition.
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- This was what the day Spratt had targeted. “I was quite surprised by this stage when I came and saw it in December becauseI think everyone was so focused on the Mengler’s Hill stage.” said Spratt. “I thought …that’s a really brutal hilltop finish and it’s the kind of stage where it just wears away the legs.”
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- Holding on for second. “I was really focused on Spratt today,” said Stephens. “My form coming from America is not the same as the Aussies so I had to lay a little low and pick my battles.”
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- Brown turned around a tough race for her team, time trialling to the end solo to take third. “When things seem like they’ve all gone downhill you’ve just got to keep fighting and sometimes you’ll still get a result.”
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- Garfoot leading the rest of the peloton in. She took fourth and handed over the leader’s jersey. “Mitchelton just did exactly what we expected them to do and we just didn’t have the legs to do what we wanted to do to work against them,” Garfoot told Ella CyclingTips. “So they just rode away.”
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- Congratulations from the teammates.
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- And from a former teammate. “I’m congratulating Mitchelton on the awesome ride. I didn’t expect anything less,” said Garfoot.
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- The only domestic rider to stand on the podium so far this tour. It wasn’t even a week ago the former runner was also standing on the third step at Australian Road Nationals.
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- Donuts well earned!
Follow the link to see the full results from Stage 3. Next its the final stage, 20 laps of an Adelaide street circuit to clock up 46km.
Ella CyclingTips is on the ground covering the race so keep an eye on the Ella page, Ella CyclingTips Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for the latest news on the final day of racing.
