STAGE THREE - Unley to Stirling - Total 129km
My pictorial diary of today, but briefly we drove to Stirling where the riders would pass through the town twice before the final sprint. I got myself sitting by the fence in the feed zone on the first pass and watched the riders pass in what I would call an orderly and quite slow manner through the feed zone collecting feed bags full of goodies on the way. The riders were probably thankful for the break as they had been racing for 85km and it was a long drag to the feed zone up an incline, and there was a break of 4 riders.
Then I moved back to our group at the 150m to the finish spot which is a great place to watch the attcks being launched and you get a spot closer to the fence too.
The final lap of 22km was full of attcks and the funniest thing was that as we saw Graeme Brown from Rabobank pass us he was elbowing another rider out of his way and we were just talking about it when they must have only got about 2 km up the road and there was a crash and he was in it. On the news he said that it was just one of those things......it makes you wonder what might have really happened.
Anyway some brief pics......The winner of the stage was U23 World Champion Michael Matthews who was clearly too good at this finish for either Griepl or Goss who had to settle for 2nd and 3rd.....awesome win for the upcoming aussie (and world champion).......very exciting stuff
also see my other TDU pics at:-
Stage 1 and 2
Lance Twitter ride
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| The podium girls are all very pretty and their outfits look great. |
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| Feed zones are dangerous, this guy has dropped a bidon which could cause havoc in the group.....by this stage of the race there are a lot of riders wearig bandages already |
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| More feed station chaos....it was ineresting being at a feed station......lots of riders everywhere and total chaos.... |
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| This was the break which was reeled in with around 18km to go (Luke Durbridge - most aggressive rider for today is in the UniSA colors and he attacked at any opportunty and won the KOM !!!) |
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| HTC leading the pace - what a strong team along with Team Sky and in the background is Lance Armstrong from Radioshack |
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| Matt Hayman from Team Sky looks like he is working hard with 22 km to go |
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| The looks on the riders faces say it is a hot day and they still have 22km to go (and have just come up a nasty rise (which I rode up yesterday, not too steep, but they were going FAST!) |
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| Young Aussie fan waits patiently for the peleton! |
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Goss wearing the Young Rider jersey leads out the sprint. Goss had punctured in the last 10km and had to chase to get back on and is now in the front thanks to his HTC team and he is going for it. Matthews is on the right of the pic and he gets the win......he just takes off about now and seriously guns it and makes it look easy
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| These riders were well down on time after this stage. Recognise anyone! |
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| We had great car parks, about 150m from the finish line.......WOO HOO |
3 comments:
Great shots! It looks like you're in danger of being run over by the sprinters.
Awesome pictures, seriously! Thanks for sharing an up-front seat!
Thanks jeff and Donna, I have had a great week, so I thought I would share some of my favorite pictures of the week........kind of like a backstage pass (without actually having a backstage pass)
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