Ewan falters as Viviani conquers heat

AUSSIE sprint ace Caleb Ewan and Italian cycling star Elia Viviani have had a dramatic reversal of fortunes in stage one of the Tour Down Under.

Two days after Ewan won the Down Under Classic, he was nowhere to be seen in the sprint finish yesterday at Port Adelaide.

Viviani unleashed a superbly timed sprint to win the time at the Tour Down Under after winning a stage in the 2018 race.

“When you start the WorldTour season with the stage win and the leader’s jersey here in Tour Down Under, it’s the best way,” Viviani said.

“Now we know we’ve done a good job during the winter – that’s the question we’ve already answered.”

Ewan was primed for stage one, but the new Lotto-Soudal team leader was never in the hunt for the final sprint.

“I was constantly in the last K trying to move up,” a frustrated Ewan said.

“I tried to start sprinting with a couple of hundred metres to go but I knew, as soon as I started, that I didn’t have that much left.

“It was one of those finals where it was really tricky to think out what was going to happen.”

Three-time world champion Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) was another stage win contender who was not sighted in the sketchy sprint finish.

The temperature hit the 40s as stage one went through the hills. While a sea breeze took some of the edge off the temperature at the finish, it was still in the high 30s.

Today’s second stage in the Barossa has been cut by about 27km because of the heatwave.