Tour Down Under: Ewan wins stage 1

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Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEdge) delivered on his favourite status in front of home crowds to win the first WorldTour stage of the season ahead of Mark Renshaw (Dimension Data) and Wouter Wippert (Cannondale). Ewan will now wear the ochre jersey for stage 2, his first stint in the leader’s jersey at WorldTour level.

With victory in Sunday’s Down Under Classic criterium, Ewan’s odds as the sprinter to beat at the Tour Down Under shortened but when the 21-year-old hit out with around 200 metres to go, there were several bike lengths back to Renshaw when he crossed the line.

"I felt really good all day and the team obviously backed me all day because they rode from the start and I’m just super happy that I could finish it off for them," Ewan said in a post-race television interview. "In the road race you have to be super conservative during the day… because the sprinters are so fast these days it’s usually down to the freshest legs and the strongest team in the end.

"I need to thank Gerro for sharing the team with me. If he says to the team that he wants them to do the drive for him, they would have to do that. So for a guy like that who can really win the overall, to say ‘yeah you can have your go on the day there’s so many sprints’ it means a lot. It’s a really proud moment for me, I’ve never led a WorldTour race before and to lead my first one in my home country is a real honour for me."

Orica-GreenEdge missed out on winning a stage at the 2015 edition of the race and as Australia's sole WorldTour team are expected to perform in Adelaide each January. Ewan's stage win is an early pressure release before the team looks to two important stages for Simon Gerrans and his quest for a fourth win.

The early stages

It was grupo compacto for the first two kilometres of the stage before a trio of Sean Lake (UniSA-Australia), Alexis Gougeard (AG2R-La Mondiale) and Martijn Keizer (LottoNL-Jumbo) jumped away from the peloton to quickly build an advantage of two minutes. The Tea Three Gully Hill offered up the only KOM points of the day and it was Lake winning the sprint ahead of Keizer to secure the jersey on his first day of WorldTour racing.

Back in the peloton, Orica-GreenEdge was controlling the pace with Lampre-Merida offering some early assistance. With the riders approaching the Barossa circuit that passed through the towns of Williamstown, Lyndoch and Cockatoo Valley, the three leaders saw their advantage yo-yo from 1:30 to just over two minutes with temperatures still on the hot side of 35 degrees Celsius.

On the first pass through Lyndoch, winds had whipped up the dry lands to see plenty of dust particles floating through the air. Lake led the trio through the finishing arch with their lead hovering around two minutes. At the first intermediate sprint point, Gougeard lead out and held off Keizer for the maximum points.

At the 65km kilometre mark to go, the trio saw their lead drop to less than one minute due to Orica-GreenEdge’s work in the peloton but then went out to 1:20 within a handful of kilometres. AG2R and Tinkoff were sitting in next behind the local WorldTour team with Lampre-Merida continuing to stay near the front.

A second sprint win for Gougeard secured him six bonus seconds as the efforts of the day got to Keizer, who bid farewell to his breakaway companions with 42km to race. As Gougeard and Lake forged on, it was Hepburn continuing on the front of the peloton as AG2R riders sat in behind.

With 22km to go, Lake upped the pace to drop Gougeard, who did enough to earn the combativity award, and go solo as the sprinters teams were getting into position ready for the bunch gallop. Lake continued to turn the pedals over to hold a 55 second lead at 16km to race with Hepburn and Tsgabu Grmay (Lampre-Merida) controlling the tempo.

With 11km to race, Hayman punctured and chased back on as Lake continued to hold onto his lead of 35 seconds. The 24-year-old was eventually captured with 5.8km to go as Team Sky stormed to the front for Ben Swift. Orica-GreenEdge kept cool as Jack Bobridge came to the front for a spell, joined by IAM Cycling and Movistar, but as the peloton entered the final straight, the aero tuck sprint position of Ewan saw him power past his rivals up through the middle of the road for win number six in season 2016.

With a 15 second time bonus on the line for the winner, Ewan's win catapulted him into the ochre jersey while Gougeard's intermediate wins see the Frenchman occupy third place on GC and will wear the best young rider jersey tomorrow with second placed Renshaw to wear the points jersey.

With all the GC favourites arriving on the same time, stage 2 into Stirling will see the first significant time gaps open up on the general classification.

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