Tour of Southland begins
CYCLING
FORMER winner Aaron Gate and his strong Black Spoke team have laid down an early challenge after the opening stage of the Tour of Southland yesterday.
The Aucklander executed the winning move late in the 151km stage from Invercargill to Gore, beating the peloton home in a bunch sprint to take stage honours and the yellow jersey.
What is expected to be an ultracompetitive 64th edition of New Zealand’s most prestigious stage race started in chilly conditions.
“It wasn’t as exciting to start with as we were hoping because there wasn’t much wind,” Gate said.
“Our plan B was to light it up on the climb into the back of
Gore and it just worked out perfectly with James Oram doing a perfect little leadout.
‘‘The two of us managed to sneak away and then Ben Oliver [Central BenchwalkersWillbike] joined us and the three of us managed to hold off the peloton for the win, so that was awesome.”
Oliver was second on the stage, with Oram third.
Southland’s Matt Zenovich deservedly rode his way into the sprint ace jersey, leading a twoman breakaway for most of the stage with New Zealand endurance track representative Jordan Kerby.
Paul Wright, who also featured early in the breakaway, finished the day with the king of the mountain jersey.
Black Spoke has ventured south with a strong team which includes Gate, the 2016 Southland winner, 2013 winner Oram, and twotime winner Scott Guyton in the team car.
Time bonuses helped Gate to a sixsecond overall lead from Oram, with Tom Sexton, who started the day in yellow after the opening prologue, in third place, 14sec down.
Defending champion Michael Vink is in ninth place, trailing Gate by 29sec.
Black Spoke will be concerned about Ethan Batt after he was caught up in a crash yesterday.
Its debutantes Alexander White and Joshua Kench are expected to do plenty of work defending the yellow jersey during today’s 148km stage from Riverton to Te Anau, including the Blackmount hill climb.
“We're sort of going to work it out on the road and see how it goes,” Gate said.
“We’ll be on the front and be active. We don’t want to have too big a group sneaking off the front.
‘‘Blackmount is always an interesting one that you have to be ready for. It’s not the longest climb but it can still do a bit of damage and it’s often a fast finish from there.
‘‘We want to be in the right place at the right time and just be attentive really.”
ALTO DE L’ANGLIRU, Spain: Richard Carapaz regained the leader’s red jersey from Primoz Roglic in the Vuelta a Espana, opening up a 10second advantage after yesterday’s stage 12 up the punishing Alto de l’Angliru, as Hugh Carthy pulled off a heroic solo victory.
Briton Carthy pulled clear of Aleksandr Vlasov and Enric Mas in the final kilometre just as the climb began to ease and accelerated towards the finish line to claim his first stage win at a grand tour.
Carthy was 16sec ahead of the Russian and the Spaniard, who came second and third.
Carapaz, riding for the Ineos Grenadiers, also finished 16sec down in fourth but missed out on bonus seconds by failing to get on the podium.
Ecuadorian Carapaz pulled off a series of attacks on Roglic (Team Jumbo Visma) over the final 2km and the Slovenian dug deep at first before running out of energy as the gap widened, but he managed to limit the damage.
‘‘I’m very happy to wear the red jersey again.
‘‘It’s a good thing for me, for the team, and for everything we’ve been doing,’’ Carapaz, who has been involved in a tense battle with Roglic from the start of the Vuelta, said.
New Zealand’s George Bennett (JumboVisma) had a good day, finishing the stage in 12th to be 11th overall.
Fellow Kiwi Dion Smith (MitcheltonScott) was 96th on the stage and is 87th overall.