PORTE LOSES GROUND AS SAGAN SPRINTS INTO YELLOW
Schools hunting sail title
TEAMS from Hobart schools, Friends, Fahan, Hutchins and, for the first time, Taroona High School will contest the 2018 Australian Secondary Schools Team Racing Championships on Port Phillip Bay this week.
Blairgowrie Yacht Squadron is hosting the championship which starts tomorrow and continues through to Sunday.
Friends and Hutchins are past winners of the championship and have gone on to represent Australia and win the Interdominion contest against New Zealand Schools.
Twenty-four schools have nominated teams for the championships.
Team sailing is where three small dinghies compete as a team and their individual results are added.
Races are short, sharp and numerous, requiring good sailing, a good knowledge of the rules and some cunning.
The prestige event, comprising an open championship and a female championship, will be sailed in two-person Pacer dinghies, the same craft in which Hobart’s inter-school team sailing contests are held.
Many of the teenage sailors are regular competitors in the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania off-the-beach division and at Sandy Bay Sailing Club.
Helming the Hutchins boats will be Sam King (captain), Nick Smart (vicecaptain), William Cooper, Charlie Zeeman with crew Howard Tapping, Christopher Eyre, Oliver Hugo and Charlie Salmon.
Competing for the first time, the Taroona High team comprises Timmy Vincent, Llovett Taylor-Smith, Miley Fleming, Pallas Taylor-Smith, Lucia Gaspareni, Jonty Savory and Fred O’May.
Helming the Friends’ boats will be Hugo Hamilton, William Sargent, Rupert Hamilton and Brendon Crisp, with crew Eddie Reid, Oscar O’Donogue, Oscar Pritchard and Daniel Maree.
Girls from Fahan are making another strong tilt at the all-female championship, with the team comprising Chloe Abel, Lily Zeeman, Amy Potter, Meg Goodfellow, Laura Cooper, Anabelle Zeeman and Emily Nicholson. RICHIE Porte badly needs to make up lost ground in the team time trial after the Tour de France opened with two days of chaos.
The Australian contender lost six more seconds in Stage 2 as three-time world road champion Peter Sagan won and took the yellow jersey.
After months of uncertainty about the future of Porte’s BMC team and growing speculation about the Australian’s future, cyclingnews has reported that he will join Trek-Segafredo on a two-year deal.
In the meantime, BMC has surrounded Porte with a powerful line-up at the Tour and it is one of the favourites to win the third-stage team time trial.
Last month, BMC won the team time trial at the Tour de Suisse and that set up Porte for the overall title, which he says is probably the biggest win of his career.
Porte and BMC will need to fire in the 35.5km stage at Cholet, with the 33-year-old one minute and seven seconds behind Sagan on the general classification. It is not disastrous, with Porte sharing the same overall time as defending champion Chris Froome.
But contenders such as last year’s Tour runner-up Rigoberto Uran, 2014 winner Vincenzo Nibali, Tom Dumoulin and Froome’s Sky teammate Geraint Thomas have all gained valuable seconds.
Thomas is only 15 seconds off Sagan’s lead, while Nibali, Dumoulin and Uran are among a big group of riders at 16 seconds. “We have one of the strongest teams here so, hopefully, we can take back some time,” Porte said.
BMC reported in its media release soon after stage two that Porte had not lost any more time.
But nearly four hours after the end of the 182.5km sprint stage from Mouilleron-Saint Germain to La Roche-Sur-Yon, race organisers made sweeping changes to the results.
Race judges apparently made an initial error with the times after crashes and mechanical problems marred the last few kilometres. The changes meant a nasty surprise late in the day for Porte, who is now 71st overall.
Porte had a flat tyre in the first half of the stage but his teammates ensured he returned to the peloton quickly and he finished the stage out of trouble in 18th.
Sagan was ahead of the pileup less than 2km from the finish th a t took out several riders, including Australian Michael Matthews (Team Sunweb) and Italian stage-one winner Fernando Gaviria (Quick-Step). The Bora-Hansgrohe star held off a fast-finishing Italian Sonny Colbrelli (BahrainMerida), while French rider Arnaud Demare (GroupamaFdJ) was third. AAP