BMC's Richie Porte rode away to take the victory on the Paracombe on the second stage of the 19th Santos Tour Down Under.
Caleb Ewan of Orica Scott in the leader’s ochre jersey plus the sprint and young rider’s jerseys after his stage one win led the riders out on the Staging Connections 148.5km Stage 2 from Stirling to Paracombe.
Ondrej Cink of Bahrain Merida and Cameron Meyer of UniSA-Australia started the first break after eleven kilometres and five kilometres later, they were twenty-five seconds ahead on the first of five 21km laps before they started out to Paracombe.
However, five kilometres later, they were reeled in and the peloton readied themselves for the first intermediate sprint at Heathfield, which was won by British rider Ben Swift of Team Abu Dhabi ahead of Jay McCarthy and Sean De Bie.
Jasha Sutterlin of Movistar got clear just after the sprint and with 37kms raced, built up a lead of 4.40 due to the peloton showing no interest in him at all.
The German was 4.45 clear going into the final one hundred kilometres of a stage on a day where the temperature was at a cooler twenty six degrees celsius. The peloton decided that was too much and Sutterlin was down to 3.30 ahead in three kilometres.
Sutterlin took the second Iinet sprint at Heathfield with a lead of three minutes ahead of Bora Hansgrohe’s Michael Kolar and his team mate Rudiger Selig.
Sutterlin’s lead was continuing to drop as the likes of Luke Rowe, Ian Stannard and Thomas De Gendt put the pressure on the peloton. However, on the final climb into Stirling, the gap had gone out to 3.30 after two hours and ten minutes of racing.
Onto the fifth lap and the gap was back at four minutes to the peloton which had the race leader near the front of the pack which closed in and on the start of the road up to Paracombe, the peloton had brought back Sutterlin with forty kilometres left.
Ian Stannard was on the front as they went through Uraidla before heading towards the descent of the Norton summit.
On that descent, Trek Segafreda’s Mads Pedersen crashed and Sergio Henao of Team Sky suffered a puncture whilst Pat Bevin of Cannondale Drapac needed a new bike.
The peloton were still all together with twenty kilometres left as Rohan Dennis of BMC punctured and was paced by Birthday Boy Miles Scotson.
Henao and Elissonde had to battle through the cars to get to the peloton but they did with just over eleven kilometres to go. Henao, one of the favourites for the stage had used a lot of energy getting back and whether he could have a say on the final climb to Paracombe, which was 1.2km-long and averaged 9.9% was open to debate.
Jose Goncalves of Katusha attacked with four kilometres left but was quickly brought back before Peter Sagan was first onto the climb.
Richie Porte of BMC went and then again with Gorka Izagirre following. Porte dropped him and shot off, sitting down when he got over the steepest part of the climb.
Richie Porte was away and he rode away to win in 3.46.04 with Izagirre second sixteen seconds down along with Esteban Chaves of Orica Scott in third. Rohan Dennis led the peloton home 19 seconds down.
Porte who now leads the race,said: “I had nightmares a few years ago and it did not work but the BMC boys looked after me and it was good to win on the Paracombe and get the jersey.
“I know I had good climbing legs and that gave me the confidence to win.”
Picture copyright of CNS Sport
Source: DSG
