HeraldSun Tour

Our team headed to Melbourne after Cadel’s Road Race where the UCI2.1 HeraldSun Tour (03-07 February) awaited.

With two nights and a full day to spare before the first stage, we had plenty of time to get organised and enjoy a good ride along Melbourne’s famous (for cyclists, anyway) Beach Road.

Wednesday morning – the day of the 2.1km prologue – arrived and we woke to rain. Racing wasn’t due to start until 6pm and with the weather the way it was I jumped on the trainer and rode for an hour. Later on that day we headed down to check out what I discovered was an interesting little course; it resembled (or actually was for the most part!) a city bike path with a few corners and a couple of S-bends. The entire course was completely fenced off.

My ride was far from being anything great, or good for that matter, but it was still a good hit out before the first proper stage.

The 6:30am wake up on Thursday morning was upon us. There’s nothing quite like a good coffee and luckily the café next door to the apartment we had was open to give me my morning fix. Once we all had breakfast, we packed up and began our hour and a half transfer to the stage; a 126km rolling course which included a Cat 2 climb roughly half way and a Cat 1 climb in the final 25km.

Within ten minutes of starting there was already a breakaway of five riders up the road. Drapac basically rode the front for the next 90km as one of their riders had won the prologue the previous day and it was up to them to do the work. The break got caught at the bottom of the Cat 1 climb while Team Sky took up the pace-setting and put pretty much everyone in the red. Froome and Kennaugh both got away on the hill while a couple of groups were close behind. I was in the second group at the top but as my group and the front group came together I was distanced due to some brake issues that had been cropping up throughout the stage.

The 145km second road stage was only a 30min drive from where we stayed overnight and a 10:30 start again meant a little extra sleep in was possible. The stage had three Cat 3 climbs and some fairly good weather was installed. There were lots of attempts by riders to make the break in the first 40 minutes of racing. Eventually a pair of riders went up the road and with the traditional ‘pisso’ stop their gap grew immediately. Over the first climb two Sky riders led while I sat third wheel and they just rode a good tempo while everyone else followed. The second climb at 83km was full gas and lots of riders were dropped. The third climb came at 95km and by the time we were over the top the break had been well and truly caught and only about 20 or so riders were left in the front.

I went back to the team car for a drink and with no team mates around I said to the guys in the car that I was going up the road. I then initiated a attack still with 45km to go in which one other rider, Cam Bayley, came with me. Neil van der Ploeg had already taken off a couple of minutes earlier.

Myself and Cam rode across to him and we all worked together but only ever got out to a one minute lead at most while Sky and Orica chased. Cam and I put in some decent turns and van der Ploeg – who hadn’t been taking as many pulls – took the intermediate sprint points at the start/finish line. With only 15km remaining I decided to leave them to it and go alone out front.

By this stage my gap was only 20-30 seconds ahead of the peloton. I stayed alone until 8km to go when I was caught by the Sky-led chase. The race was in full flight towards the finish and a select group got away with a 25 second lead into the finish. The stage was won by Ewan while I rolled in with the much-reduced peloton in 20th.

Stage three yet again provided us with some incredible weather and the hottest day on tour so far. It was a fairly flat stage with a few rolling climbs early on and 146km in length. From the gun, a break went straight away with five guys – we had one team mate present in the group. The gap grew while we rolled along in the peloton and everyone took their usual nature break. Eventually, things slowly sped up in the peloton as the WT teams started to reel the break in.

With just under 10km remaining the break was caught and it was guns blazing towards the finish. It was an untypical bunch kick, with an up hill, descent and a left-hander in the last 700m towards the line. I finished 16th on the stage but knew that I could’ve actually finished a lot higher; I let myself down by not studying the finish better.  Oh well, a nice easy day done with the final stage left.

The final stage of the HeraldSun Tour was upon us and once again we were very fortunate to have some great weather. The course was just over 120km but the Arthurs Seat climb had to be completed three times, with the finish at the top of the third ascent.

The stage kicked off quickly in hot dry conditions and eventually a small break made its way up the road. Team Sky rode the front most of the stage till we hit Arthurs Seat for the first time. On heading out and seeing this 3km climb the morning of the race I will admit it was a lot bigger than I ever expected, being around 8-9 minutes to climb it. Anyways the break was caught before the first ascent of the hill.

The peloton was already reduced in numbers the first time up and Nick Millar and I were the only riders from KRD to make the front group of around 40 riders. Around the back of the course not much happened and then again we were climbing for the second time on the hill. The peloton was by now even smaller. 1.2km from the top of the hill, even more splits were happening and I was near the leading 15 riders. Without warning, a random back pack that was sitting on the side of the road somehow caught my shoe, did a couple of revolutions and then hooked onto my bike’s rear quick release. After dragging this big back pack for around 30m I had to stop and un-hook it. As one would expect in a tense moment of the race, the bag ended up being given a discuss-type send-off.

I remounted my bike and had to chase over the top of the climb and a few km over the other side to catch back up to the front group.
I made it back and noticed two riders had broken away as I was chasing back, one of them being Froome. I then had around 8km to recover before the final ascent of the climb.

Riding it to the best I could I ended up finishing over a minute and a half down on the stage winner and overall Tour winner Froome but only about 30 seconds off the best of the bunch I started the climb with. It wasn’t a bad effort given the circumstances but I’m definitely motivated to go back to the drawing board now and get things aligned for what is becoming a very good year ahead.

My team has already received Asia Tour invites and for the next couple of months I’m going to be fairly busy and will have tallied more UCI race days in just the next month than I was given the opportunity to race in a entire year last year. It’s super exciting and I’m looking forward to representing this NZ Champs jersey throughout Asia.

Bed tally: 12

Thanks for reading,
Jase