The Jonker report - Competition explodes on the road
January 22
2009
It has been an incredible day at the Tour Down Under – full of heart stopping moments and heart aching consequences.
Put together a field of top athletes with big professional team machines behind them and you create a powerfully competitive atmosphere.
The start of the race today had the same atmosphere as the Tour de France. The sense of combat was almost palpable – and the way they all took off you might have thought their lives depended on winning the race.
They were fired up – sometimes racing is like that – it is hard to explain how or why it happens but the riders seem to ignite all at once.
Team UniSA-Australia had a plan to keep someone in whatever breakaway came and they were successful. Brilliant work from a Wilson/Clarke duo saw team UniSA in the thick of it and in competitive position to strike late in the race. They were doing fine and mixing it with the big names...O’Grady, Rogers, Davis.
Until the trouble started. There were four crashes across the day. In the biggest and most spectacular, the riders were flying down the road at about 60 or 70 km an hour when they tumbled.
The road was strewn with bodies and bikes and while some got up and carried on - a few were taken off to hospital including Andre Greipel with a broken collar bone (he is now out of the Tour – a huge blow for team Columbia) and our own Baden Cooke, who was severely grazed and bruised and also withdrew.
Three key UniSA riders went down including Jack Bobidge and Aaron Kemps but tonight they are resting and regrouping because that is what tour cycling is all about – getting up and doing it again.
Team Quick-Step will be delighted that despite coming off the bike in the big spill, Allan Davis managed to still come home in second place and retain the Ochre jersey.
Menglers Hill tomorrow will offer a different kind of test for all the riders and especially the sprinters – and it will be a test they will have to face with some very sore bones.
Patrick Jonker