Haas wins Tour of Tasmania

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Nathan Haas (Genesys Wealth Advisers) has won the Caterpillar Underground Mining Tour of Tasmania, stamping his authority on the final day of the 10-stage event, to claim a famous double victory in Devonport. Haas benefited from a perfect Genesys lead-out by Anthony Giacoppo to take the final stage ahead of local Bernard Sulzberger (V Australia).

The 22-year-old has now won an impressive five stage races on the National Road Series calendar, and appears an ominous threat to challenge at next week's Jayco Herald Sun Tour. Still in disbelief Haas described the realisation of a long-term dream at the end of the race.

"I set this goal for myself at the start of the year to come down to Tasmania to win my favorite race," he said. “I am so proud of myself to achieve this result, but I am equally proud of my Genesys team. My team-mates turned themselves inside out for me. Guys like AJ [Giacoppo] are incredible! He led me out from 800 to go and I reckon I couldn't have won if I didn't get him to swing over!"

"[To win] well I am a little bit taken aback, to be honest," he continued as he took in the full magnitude of the win. "This race is really important to me. It’s where I started out and realised that I could make something of myself as a bike rider."

His closest threat Josh Atkins (Jayco-2XU), missed out on valuable bonus seconds in the day's first sprint and from there drifted further back to ultimately finish 25 seconds down in second overall.

"I had shit legs today," Atkins said bluntly on twitter. "Mis-timed first KOM with [finish] line in silly place. [But still finished] second overall, second in the KOM. First team. Would of liked all first. [But still a] Great tour in Tassy."

Cameron Peterson (V Australia), finished in third overall, with the stage 3 winner's inability to compete in the sprint primes over the 10-stages ultimately costing him too much time.

Teammate Sulzberger brought some joy to V Australia, managing to wrap up the best Tasmanian classification over Genesys's Nathan Earle with Jai Crawford (Jayco-2XU) third. Sulzberger crashed hard in yesterday's Burnie criterium, but courageously continued on, and has now been fittingly rewarded with the classification win.

Jayco-2XU finished on top of the team standings courtesy of having both Atkins and Dale Parker (Jayco-2XU) high up in the general classification.

Series winner

Steele Von Hoff (Genesys Wealth Advisers), who rode in the team car in Tasmania, finished atop the Scody Cup points series standings after an impressive two and half months from the 23-year-old. His 12 stage victories was a Scody Cup record in the five event series.

"It’s an honor to be among such illustrious company," Von Hoff said. "The Scody Cup is a greatly-respected prize. It’s been won by some awesome bike riders. It’s my privilege to have my name on the honor roll among them."