Another gorgeous day in Adelaide greeted the riders today for the last stage of this year's Tour Down Under. Blue skies, sunshine and a light wind made for great riding and spectator conditions.
We managed to score a position at around the 90m mark with a great view of the riders heading around the corner into the straight and then up onto the finish line in King William Street.
This is a great stage for getting a good close up of the riders as they head onto the circuit an hour or so before the race to warm up and have a chat. The atmosphere is always exciting and always offers fabulous opportunities for close up photo's of the riders.
I managed to have a little chat with the one and only Rupert Guinness (SMH sports journalist) looking bright as always and he was very gracious to have a little picture with me. Thanks Rupert!
(I'll post some photo's including that one next week in a wrap up post of the Tour.)
But back to the race.
As always a few riders broke away early, including the one and only Jens Voigt. But the peloton never let them far from their sights and by the last couple of laps they were all back together. Lotto were setting up for yet another picture perfect sprint for Andre Greipel.
As the riders rounded the corner for the straight Lotto was in great position with Greipel sitting in about third wheel ready to pounce when none other than Mark Renshaw, now riding for Team Blanco decided to throw a little spanner in the works, weaving through and jumping them.
Greipel had to go. Renshaw held on, for a few moments... but in the end Greipel's power and top end speed was too much and he crossed the line for yet another victory. This one marks his 100th career victory, 14 TDU stage wins and his third for this year's race. There's some stats for you.
What an exciting sprinter he is to watch in the flesh!
Renshaw did hold on for second with Boasson Hagen in third.
Overall Team Blanco was able to successfully defend Tom-Jelte Slagter's lead in the overall classification, no doubt a proud moment for young 'TJ'.
I will do a wrap up post next week but for now am just enjoying my last night in Adelaide for another year. What a fabulous city and fantastic race! We shall be back again next year, for sure.
(And for those of you who may be interested we did have a
rematch of the table tennis tonight. And in a very tight encounter with the score see-sawing for much of the match I can report I came out on top. Sweet, sweet victory.)
