Tour Down Under

Simon Gerrans wins Tour Down Under and puts GreenEDGE on international cycling map

SIMON Gerrans secured his second career victory - and put new Australian team GreenEDGE on the international cycling map - when he claimed the Tour Down Under in Adelaide yesterday.

While German sprinter Andre Greipel took his third stage win of the week at the end of a tense 90km street race in the South Australian capital, Gerrans claimed his first-ever stage race victory on the WorldTour and the first win for GreenEDGE.

"It's just fantastic. I really can't thank my teammates at GreenEdge enough," said Gerrans, who won the race in 2006 when it was not yet part of cycling's elite calendar.

"It's such a fantastic victory and we couldn't ask for a more perfect way to start the season."

Gerrans went into the final stage of the tour wearing the leader's ochre jersey on a countback from Movistar's Alejandro Valverde. And when both riders finished the week-long race in the leading pack, a countback was used to determine the winner.

Gerrans had finished ahead of the Spaniard on the stages finishing in Stirling, Victor Harbor and Tanunda. Valverde only got the better of Gerrans in the two-up sprint to the finish at the top of Old Willunga Hill on Saturday.

Valverede needed either to pick up at least one bonus second in either of the two intermediate sprints yesterday or pick up a time bonus at the end of the stage to upstage Gerrans.

Gerrans knew he had won the overall classification the moment he crossed the finish line two places behind Valverde with the same winning time as stage winner Greipel.

Greipel, who wore the ochre jersey for two days, edged out Mark Renshaw (Rabobank) and the Italian star on the Lampre-ISD team, Alessandro Petacchi.

For Gerrans and GreenEDGE, it was another tick in the box after the success at the national road championship in Ballarat.

"I made it a target to win the national championship and the Tour Down Under." Gerrans said. "I've ticked those boxes, so it is a real dream start."

Gerrans said the team's pre-race plan was to send riders up the road early to negate the threat of Valverde stealing the stage.

"It meant that Alejandro didn't have the opportunity to sprint today. We raced the first half of the race very aggressively, you saw that with both Cameron Meyer and Luke Durbridge particularly up the front.

"At one point in the race there was still a chance Alejandro would still go for it, but I made sure that Robbie McEwen and Matt Goss were there to (out) sprint him if necessary.

"When the two intermediate sprints went by with him not figuring, it was then just a matter of focusing on making sure that I finished nice and high in the bunch so I wouldn't lose any places to Alejandro," Gerrans said.

Even when the Belgian Jan Bakelandts (RadioShack) had figured in an earlier breakaway with Romain Sicard (Euskatel-Euskadi) and Meyer of GreenEDGE, team director Matt White never panicked.

Griepel's stage win wasn't enough to take the Jayco points classification, which went to Team Sky's Edvald Boasson Hagen of Norway. UniSA's Rohan Dennis, one of Australia's hopes at the London Games, took home the Skoda King of the Mountain as well as best young rider gong, while the RadioShack-Nissan squad of Bakelandts won the teams classification.

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