- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The penultimate stage of this year’s Tour Down Under is Stage 5, 151.5 kilometres from Mclaren Vale to Willunga Hill. Join me here on The Roar from 12:15pm (AEDT) for live coverage.
Yesterday we saw another win in the final sprint for the UniSA team, this time from Steele Van Hoff, the team continuing their incredible Tour.
However we also saw a nasty crash inside the last kilometres on the final straight, but it seems all the general classification contenders are fine to continue.
Pre-race sprint favourite Marcel Kittel (Giant) missed out for another day, meaning he realistically only has one chance which will come on Stage 6 in Adelaide.
Today’s stage features two ascents up Old Willunga Hill. Coming into the stage we see Rohan Dennis (BMC) with a seven-second lead on GC to teammate Cadel Evans, and it will be interesting to see how they decide to handle the situation.
The stage itself is lumpy the whole way before the final climbs up Williunga Hill. The riders begin the day with three laps of a circuit that is 40 kilometres in length from the start line in Mclaren Vale to the coast at Snapper Point, which is the location of the day’s two intermediate sprints which come at distances of 63.4 kilometres and 104.3 kilometres.
The first circuit lumps and bumps its way around before going up a solid hill and descending back down to the end of the circuit. At the end of the second lap of the circuit, it will look as if the riders are beginning another lap, however once they reach the end of Main Rd at Willunga, instead of turning right as they had been doing, the riders will turn left and line up the first ascent of Willunga Hill.
After reaching the summit of Willunga Hill for the first time at a distance of 129.1 kilometres they will descend and head back to main road. After reaching Willunga for the second time, they will turn left again and line up the finishing climb of Willunga Hill.
In a race that is decided by a matter of seconds year in and year out, and has a 10-second time bonus for a win, this stage can all but secure overall victory for those riders within a handful of seconds of the overall lead.
BMC have got some very interesting tactics to think about with both Rohan Dennis and Cadel Evans in very good positions to win the race overall, meanwhile riders like Richie Porte (Sky), Domenico Pozzovivo (AG2R), Michael Rogers (Saxo), Luis Leon Sanchez and Tom Dumoulin (Giant), know they will have the full support of their team, but will need to put in a mighty effort to unseat the BMC boys.
Either way it is going to be a fascinating stage so be sure to join The Roar from 12:15pm (AEDT) for our live coverage of the stage, and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments.