If Cadel Evans and Richie Porte have any serious intentions of winning the 2014 Tour Down Under, then today’s the day they have to make a move.
Today’s 145 kilometre stage from Norwood to Campbelltown, will revisit the wonderful Corkscrew climb that made its TDU debut last year and had a big effect on the outcome of the race.
No one won the title on Corkscrew last year, but some riders certainly lost it.
And so it will be today.
And it’s not just a matter of the sharp 2.5km climb, averaging 15 percent, or the narrow road and the tight hairpins, made tighter by the screaming fans who’ll line the climb.
There’s the high speed approach to Corkscrew down the Gorge Rd where they’ll hit 100 kilometres per hour on the descent of Kangaroo Creek dam. The tight left-hander into Corkscrew Rd could get very ugly if everyone tries to go around it at speed and at the same time.
And there’s the super-tricky descent of Corkscrew that brought a few riders down last year but significantly held up a whole lot more.
It’ll also be the hottest day of the Tour, although a top of 35 degrees is nothing like what the riders were training in last week.
Neither Evans nor Porte raced the TDU last year so we have no idea of how they might go. Gerrans struggled but we later found out he had a virus.
We’ve seen Gerrans explosiveness already this week but I’m not sure if Evans can match that. And Cadel wasn’t giving anything away after he finished a narrow third in Stirling.
“It depends on the group in front, what the wind does and collaboration and combination of the riders in the first and second groups,” he said. “It’s still pretty open, but every time you lose seconds on the general classification, it is less chance you are going to be up there on the GC.”
Those are not exactly fighting words from Cadel, but as we saw at the Nationals, he doesn’t always talk himself up.
We saw Richie Porte ride people off his wheel at le Tour, but is he in that form right now? Yesterday in the final approach into Stirling, he wasn’t able to sustain his attack, but the Corkscrew is much steeper.
Simon Gerrans hasn’t yet won a record third Santos TDU title, but the odd statistical comparisons with 2006 continue.
Eight years ago Gerrans won in Angaston, took the Ochre Jersey and held onto it for the whole race. His lead on the GC after stage two in 2006 was seven seconds and it didn’t change for the rest of the Tour.
That’s exactly where we are right now. And with an Orica-GreenEDGE team which is so strong, they could easily protect his advantage.
It’s surprised me that we haven’t seen more major time splits on the climbs of Menglers Hill and the loops around Stirling, but it just goes to show how strong and determined the peloton is this week.
That won’t be the case today. Corkscrew will only take the fastest guys around seven minutes to climb, but that will be one to two minutes faster than many others which in this race is too much to make up.
It’s been a relatively quiet two days at the Tour Down Under, but that’s about to change.
Although I’m not sure it will change enough for Gerrans to be out of Ochre by day’s end.
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