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Stage 5, Nelson Bay Criterium, 30 kmsResults and Report |
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After a short hour and a half break between stages, the field faced a 30 km criterium along the shorefront of Nelson Bay. With only 60 kilometers in their legs (albeit at 49 km/h), everyone was still pretty fresh for the lunchtime speed fest. Once again it was Festina's Marcel Wüst who led the bunch out for the first few laps, trying to get the legs going again. He told cyclingnews.com that he needed the training for later on in the week, as he'd done no racing and only 400 kms of training since the Vuelta ã Espana in September. He probably deserves the break after competing in roughly 120 races this year since the beginning of February, and heads to Noosa after this for a real holiday with his family. The wind was still quite strong and sent several riders around the wrong side of the witches hats that divided the hot-dog style curcuit. But, there were no crashes and not too many serious splits. The one cash prime of the day was taken by Coca Cola NZ's Ryan Russell, just edging out a Chilean rider for the money (no time bonuses are awarded for these).
As the bunch approached the finish, attacks came from all over - Mick Rogers, Zbigniew Piatek (MROZ), Pelle Kil (QANTAS) and Colin Sturgess (Sportscover) all tried their hands without success. One the last lap, the Bosch German team who have been a bit quiet so far in the race put Raphael Schweda (2nd in Hamburg World Cup) up the front to lead out their sprinter Torsten Wilhelms. It worked out fairly well for them because he won convincingly, ahead of Uros Murn (Slovenia and 2nd yesterday), and the fast improving Marcel Wüst. The finishing order meant that Sportscover's Jeremy Hunt retained his yellow jersey, still with 13 seconds in hand over Piotr Wadecki (MROZ). For their efforts, Murn and Koerts moved themselves up slightly on GC, with the latter taking over the sprint jersey from Hunt. 30 year-old Wilhelms was extremely pleased with his win, coming in his first year back from a five and a half year layoff. He praised his teammate's lead out which enable them to force Jans Koerts into going too early, running out of legs before the line. It was the Bosch team's first win so far in the race and they may be getting wound up for their mandatory yellow jersey challenge. As a promising 24 year-old, Wilhelms was set to score a major professional contract with Motorola after winning 17 races in 1993, including several stages in the Tour Du Pont and the Post Girot Tour of Sweden. However, an infected saddle sore put him out of action for three months and he missed out on the contract. He then decided to work for a few years and put on 20 kilos before planning his comeback in the winter of 1998/99. He has won a couple of races this year but will probably still remain as an amateur and work at the same time. Rider names trivia section: regular cyclingnews reader, Franky van Haesebroucke wrote his name for us as it appears here before this morning's start. After all, what would the Dutch know about spelling Belgian names :-). For Complete Results
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