While back-to-back victories at the Santos Tour Down Under have put Sam Welsford’s beefed-up resilience and sprinting speed on display, the Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe rider knows his time in the leader's Ochre-colured jersey is almost over, with the GC contenders expected to take charge on Thursday's third stage.
So far the race hasn’t been flat, but with the climbs not as steep and further from the finish line, the sprint teams have controlled the race. That meant back-to-back winner Welsford. He is sitting on top of the overall leader board but another 118 riders are all within 20 seconds.
“You know, I think for GC, this is the big shakedown” said Welsford whose Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe team will likely turn their focus to the team’s GC card Finn Fisher-Black instead on Thursday.
Stage three from Norwood to Uraidla is 147.5km long, has 3,236m of elevation gain.
The climbing starts early, with the field passing over Norton Summit. Then it is an up and down journey that ends with the category 1 Knotts Hill.
It is 2.6km long with an average gradient of 8% and peak of 13.4%. It hasn’t appeared on the Tour Down Under route before but this time it will be tackled twice. The first ascent crests with 40.8km of the 147.5km stage to go and the second at just 5.6km from the line.
The challenge it poses seems to be bigger in reality than on paper.
“Coming in, I was still thinking Willunga was the main stage, but after reconning the third stage, I think it might be the most important,” Fisher-Black told Cyclingnews.
The dual climb of Willunga comes on Saturday at the end of stage 5 and it has traditionally been an overwhelming GC factor in what is usually a tight run race where bonus seconds picked up along the way can make all the difference.
This year, however, it looks like the climb that is synonymous with the Tour Down Under will have to share the limelight given the scale of the challenge riders are expecting on stage 3.
“It's a really tricky day. There's a technical approach to the final climb, and that one is really nasty and steep,” said Georg Zimmerman (Intermarché-Wanty), who was 12th overall at the race in 2024.
“And afterwards, there's no time to recover. It's only up and down for a couple of kilometres to the finish.”
The impact that terrain will have could vary based on a number of factors, from the wind, the way it’s raced and how the tactics and strategy unfold, with a number of unknowns particularly since it’s the climb’s first appearance.
It may not be a day where the GC battle can be won but there is consensus that it could easily be a day where the race is lost.
“I don’t think anyone is going to win the race on stage 3 – I think that will still go down to Willunga – but I think that if you are not in that front group tomorrow you won’t be able to make up that time on the Willunga stage so it’s an important day,” Picnic PostNL sports director Matthew Winston told Cyclingnews.
“I imagine it is going to be a smaller group sprint coming to the line but if you are not in that group it could be race over.”
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