World time trial champion Annemiek van Vleuten showed her class along the streets of Melbourne today, taking the victory on stage two of the Women’s Herald Sun Tour presented by Let’s Go Motorhomes, in a lung busting 1.6km race against the clock.
Wearing her rainbow stripe skinsuit for the first time, Van Vleuten was in a league of her own stopping the clock with a time two second faster than her nearest rival Katrin Garfoot (Team Australia) with New Zealand champion Georgia Williams claiming an impressive third place to make it two on the podium for Mitchelton-SCOTT.
Early hot-seat
The first rider to set a threatening time was Nettie Edmondson (Wiggle-High5) with a time of 2:13:64 that left her sitting in the hot-seat for a significant peroid before the final ten or so riders began to post times good enough to knock her out of the top spot.
Riding rainbows
In the first timed event since winning the world championship time trial last year in Bergen, Van Vleuten was finally able to debut her new rainbow skinsuit in a spectacular fashion. With large crowds in the busy centre of Melbourne, it proved to be the perfect stage to show off the new outfit in the team’s home country.
“It’s so good to win in this jersey,” said van Vleuten. “I’m so proud and to do it here in Melbourne, in Australia, for my Australian team.”
“I didn’t expect this to be honest because I suffered yesterday so hard in the last 20km and I know some girls had a more easy ride to the finish.”
“I was not feeling so much pressure because I know I am not in top top shape and I had a really hard day yesterday so I didn’t feel like the favourite today but of course you want to go hard when you are in the rainbow.”
“If you want to win a prologue you have to take risks, but I did a lot of recon of the course so I think that helped and they were calculated risks.”
Ron is the chief cook and bottlewasher at Bike World News, doing everything from website design to bike reviews.
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