Many strong sprinters present Down Under, as they are about to start an incredibly short race. We expect less than two hours of racing to find out who today’s winner will be. Ewan is one of the top favourites, and not only because he won’t be suffering from a jetlag.
Hulgaard is the first attacker of the race, and he gets away together with seven other riders: Papanov, Verwilst, Fominykh, Maccagli, Sulvaran, Orlov and Aleotti.
Kulppi and Mugisha are trying to join them, while in the peloton several teams are keeping the leaders close. The teams doing the work here are Minions, Indosat Ooredoo, Binance, Aker – MOT, Polar and Duolingo.
Razumov and Schelling tried to join the leading group, just like Kulppi and Mugisha were able to do so, but failed. Ten leaders with 45 km to go, they have a minute on the peloton where Podium Ambition and Jura – Fiat are using a domestique in the chase as well now.
25 km to go now, Einhorn doing the last bit of effort to catch back the ten leaders. Will we got some late attacks, or is everybody okay with a bunch sprint?
Pelucchi immediately with a cheeky move, but Breen brings him back quickly, clearly showing faith in last year’s winner Guarnieri. 22 km to the finish line!
Bar is the next attacker with 13 km to go, Bridges now working to reel him back in!
We’re inside the final 10 km now, as Bar stood no chance against Bridges and Edmondson.
Only 5 km left, as Podium Ambition, Minions and Jura – Fiat are the teams at the front of the race! Katrasnik also close to the head of the race, is he planning an attack?!
Ask and you shall receive! The Slovenian goes for it with 4 km to go, but you can see this is a mission impossible for the Cedevita rider. 3 km left, the sprinters positioned the best at the moment are Vesely, Ewan, Kennaugh, Silvestre and Reinhardt!
Veyhe now trying to surprise everyone with a late attack, but that simply is not going to happen. Some other sprinters positioned well include Coutinho, Afewerki, Kragh Andersen and Liu!
Reinhardt in the wheel of teammate Habtom with 1.3 km to go, this is not looking too bad! Coutinho the only one able to follow the Swiss for now, while you can see Ewan trying to close the gap by himself already! Bonifazio storming through the middle as well, but it’s still very early for someone to do a big move like this already!
Habtom releases teammate Reinhardt under the red kite, is this too early? This seems to be the ideal lead-out for Coutinho. Kragh Andersen, Vesely and Kennaugh are the first three riders behind them, with favourite Ewan now in the wheel of the latter. Silvestre, Bonifazio and Van Asbroeck also in the top-10 at the moment! 800 meters to go!
500 meters to go as Coutinho takes the lead, but Kragh Andersen is already very close as well! What a win this would be for the Carlsberg rider! Kennaugh on the right with Ewan still in his wheel!
Final 300 meters! Reinhardt clearly out of contention, as currently Kragh Andersen has the edge over Kennaugh for the win! Ewan not able to follow the Binance rider anymore, but we can see Silvestre entering the top-3 and going very fast now!
But is it fast enough?! Still Kragh Andersen leading with 200 meters to go, while we can see Van Asbroeck in the top-5 as well now!
100 metres to the finish line! Silvestre storms by Kennaugh, but Kragh Andersen still has the lead! Who is going to take this one?!
It’s Silvestre! Bralirwa – Stevens joins the PCT division in style, as they win the Down Under Classic! Kragh Andersen (2nd) and Kennaugh (3rd) complete the podium ahead of Van Asbroeck (4th).
Liu then finishes fifth for Voyagin with a late jump, whereas the rest of the top-10 is completed by Afewerki (6th), Van der Sande (7th), Ewan (8th), Howard (9th) and Bonifazio (10th). Places 11 to 15 go to Coutinho (11th), Reinhardt (12th), Cullaigh (13th), Halvorsen (14th) and Nizzolo (15th).
