Jay McCarthy (Tinkoff) won the crash affected 2nd stage of the Tour Down Under. He just pipped Diego Ulissi (Lampre-Merida) on the line with Rohan Dennis (BMC) in 3rd. McCarthy also took over the race lead.
The 2nd stage of the Tour Down Under ran its course over an undulating circuit around Stirling. 4 riders tried to escape from the peloton in the early stages, but a fast start strung the peloton out and nullified the early breakaway attempts. It was only after 35km that Adam Hansen (Lotto-Soudal) put some daylight between himself and the peloton, embarking on a solo mission.
Riding to a lead of just over 2 minutes, the Aussie was always kept in check. It was on the final lap around Stirling, with 19km to go, that Hansen was caught after some added impetus from BMC and GreenEDGE in the peloton. It was then a jostle for position right up to the final 7km where the long drag up to the line began.
Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka had Nathan Haas, Cameron Meyer and Reinardt Janse van Rensburg all in the mix with Jaco Venter again having done some good work during the finale. While most of the sprinters lost contact on the positive gradient, it was still a large group that entered the final km.
Unfortunately there was a coming together of some riders which caused a large crash just after the red kite. Cam and the rest of our African Team weren’t directly involved but the carnage put an end to our chances today as Tinkoff got the holeshot around the bodies in the road.
Cameron Meyer – Rider
