Jhonathan Narvaez (UAE Team Emirates XRG) takes over the ochre leader's jersey(Image credit: Getty Images)
Sam Welsford (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) crashed on stage 5, the second time he hit the deck this week(Image credit: Getty Images)
Tough day for overnight leader Javier Romo (Movistar)(Image credit: Getty Images)
Jhonathan Narvaez (UAE Team Emirates XRG) wins stage 5 ahead of Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL) and Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) (Image credit: Getty Images)
Javier Romo (Movistar) attacks in the final 3km(Image credit: Getty Images)
Jayco-AlUla teammates Chris Harper and Mauro Schmid launched a daring attack the first time up Willunga(Image credit: Getty Images)
Fans play music while the peloton races by on stage 5(Image credit: Getty Images)
Alex Edmondson and his Picnic PostNL team set the pace at the front of the peloton(Image credit: Getty Images)
Peloton races through Aldinga Beach (Image credit: Getty Images)
Picnic PostNL takes over the pacemaking from Movistar in the peloton(Image credit: Getty Images)
Pascal Eenkhoorn (Soudal-Quickstep) leads the four-rider breakaway(Image credit: Getty Images)
Juan Pedro Lopez (Lidl-Trek) attacks the break(Image credit: Getty Images)
Oliver Bleddyn (ARA Australia), Pascal Eenkhoorn (Soudal-Quickstep), Michael Hepburn (Jayco Alula), Pablo Torres (UAE Team Emirates XRG), Juan Pedro Lopez (Lidl-Trek) and Ben Swift (ineos Grenadiers) formed the early break(Image credit: Getty Images)
Riders lined up at the start for stage 5 in McLaren Vale (Image credit: Getty Images)
After coming so close last year, Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) timed his uphill sprint perfectly to win atop Willunga Hill on stage 5, securing the leader's jersey and likely the overall victory of the Tour Down Under.
Narváez stayed calm after a flurry of attacks came from a split and decimated peloton the second time up the iconic climb including a solo flyer from the overnight leader Javier Romo (Movistar) on the lower slopes. Luke Plapp (Jayco-AlUla) gave chase with Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL) and Narváez on his wheel as Romo pushed on, still having six seconds with one kilometre to go.
The four men came together in the next 300 metres with Plapp at the front leading the group for the sprint. Narváez jumped first with 200 metres to go, and easily held off Onley, the 2024 winner on Willunga. Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) caught the group near the finish line, taking third ahead of Plapp and Romo who were three seconds back.
“Of course, it [shows] how is the sport is, you need to keep trying, trying until you win the races,” said Narváez. “It was a hard day today, the temperature was high. It wasn’t easy. When you start, everyone tell you, you are the favourite, it’s not easy for me, but in the end, we made it.”
Narváez – with the gap on the stage and 10 seconds time bonus for the win – turned his four second deficit on the overall into a nine second advantage on Romo.
“I tried. I know that my sprint is not so good, but I tried to attack when the second group was behind, because I thought it's possible that Narváez is not in a good position. I tried – it's possible that it was too early. I lost the GC, but I'm very happy with second,” Romo told Cyclingnews.
Barring catastrophe on Sunday’s final stage, Narváez, the 2024 runner-up, will now be the overall winner of the 25th edition of the stage race as this year the Tour Down ends with a relatively flat, fast 90km stage 6 in Adelaide.
How it unfolded
The suspense was high as riders lined up in McLaren Vale for the penultimate stage of the men’s Tour Down Under. This was the last gasp for the overall contenders and also contained the summit finish every budding Australian cyclist wants to win, a task getting ever more difficult to achieve every year as the list of in-form international riders lining up grows.
Before the riders could battle it out on the final finish line of Willunga after 145.7km of racing there were plenty of other challenges to deal with. They included an early break of six that included Pablo Torres (UAE Team Emirates -XRG) who was only 35 seconds back on the overall and then there was no small matter of Wickham Hill, a 3km ascent with an average gradient of 6.9%.
The breakaway group along with Torres, included Oliver Bleddyn (ARA Australia), Michael Hepburn (Jayco-AlUla), Pascal Eenkhoorn (Soudal-Quickstep), Ben Swift (Ineos Grenadiers) and Juan Lopez (Lidl-Trek). Lopez secured the top points on the KOM, with Torres behind, but the group wasn't happy to have the GC danger on board. They ultimately dispatched Torres and also Lopez, though the Lidl-Trek rider battled on to try and rejoin.
By the time the lead group of four had passed over the top of Willunga – which they would first descend before sweeping back at the end of the day to climb it twice – the gap had stretched significantly. Swift, Eenkhoorn, Hepburn and Bleddyn were on the flat in the township at the base of Willunga Hill well before the peloton began the descent, and they continued to stretch the gap.
The descent wasn’t without its drama – although much more was still to unfold on Willunga Hill later in the day – as Chris Harper (Jayco-AlUla), stage 1 and 2 winner Sam Welsford (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Loe van Belle (Visma-Lease a Bike) fell. Luke Durbridge (Jayco-AlUla) was quickly on hand to pace Harper back to the group, the climber the team’s top rider on GC at the start of the day.
Into the flatter sections of the race, the lead group had stretched the gap out to 4:20 by the time it was 95km to go. Not able to make the catch, Lopez sat up with 89km to go, taking in the ocean views on the 30°C day and refuelling before being absorbed back into the peloton.
Round past the sparkling blue waters and Aldinga for a second time, and with 48km to go, the gap was at 2:44, the heat not yet completely on in the field but with the temperature rising as teams started to anticipate the climbs of Willunga Hill – a 3km ascent with an average gradient of 7.4% and a maximum of 11%.
At 26km to go, the gap was just 49 seconds and it was also only three up the front now as Hepburn had decided it was time for him to sit up and turn his attention to the team goals.
As the race hit the base of the climb for the first time, Bleddyn tried to ride away from his remaining break companions but with little more than 1km to go to the top of the initial ascent, they were swept up. The teams were attempting to fire early volleys, with Jayco-AlUla getting two riders off the front, Harper and Mauro Schmid going over the top of the iconic climb ten seconds in front of the stretched-out, but still well-populated, group behind.
There were splits aplenty on the aggressive final run into the climb. With Schmid and Harper having been swept up before-hand, and with news that Narváez was on the wrong side of one it didn’t take long for the big move to come, and it was from none other than the ochre jersey clad, Javier Romo (Movistar). He seemed to be living by the ethos that the best form of defence was attack as he went at the very base of the 3km ascent.
The pursuit, however, was on, Plapp was among those leading the chase at around 2km to go, though he had passengers. They pulled Romo back into the fold but with a fierce turn of speed and at just four seconds back on GC, Narváez had peeled back any gap and was now looking like the most dangerous rider in the small group heading to the line. Last year's race runner-up played his hand to perfection and now, as a result, looks set to ride away from Australia with ochre on his back.
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Simone is a degree-qualified journalist that has accumulated decades of wide-ranging experience while working across a variety of leading media organisations. She joined Cyclingnews as a Production Editor at the start of the 2021 season and has now moved into the role of Australia Editor. Previously she worked as a freelance writer, Australian Editor at Ella CyclingTips and as a correspondent for Reuters and Bloomberg. Cycling was initially purely a leisure pursuit for Simone, who started out as a business journalist, but in 2015 her career focus also shifted to the sport.
