The Classic returned to Sydney today for another split-stage day involving a road and a circuit race. The road race was in fact a longer, harder criterium, with the riders tackling 35 laps of a 2.86 km circuit in Sydney's Centennial Park. The course is part of the road circuit for next year's Olympics in Sydney giving several international teams a chance to test it out in advance. There is a 400 m hill to be negotiated each lap, which really tends to hurt with 10 or so laps to go.

The pace was once again flat out, as it has been for the entire Tour, and the early laps were run at over 45 km/h. Casino Canberra's former KOM jersey holder, Michael Rogers, was very active, getting away in many of the breaks that occurred early on in the race. Unlike previous years, the pace never really settled down to allow a decent break to establish itself, possibly giving some of the non-GC riders a chance to win a stage.

The riders at the top of the climb
Copyright 1999: Knapp Communications

An important breaks occurred at lap 8, when a group of around 20 containing Bart Hickson (2nd on GC) got away, holding a 20 second gap for several laps over the bunch. This forced the Slovenians to chase as their top riders Murn and Stangelj had missed the move. However, the break was too large to get organised and was brought back a few laps later. At the halfway point, a group of 10 containing GC threats, Uros Murn (Slovenia) and Kam Po Wong (Sportscover) as well as Rogers again escaped and held a gap of some 30 seconds for quite some time. The teams of Caravello and Festina were forced into chasing, although Jonathon Hall wanted to see more of Scott Sunderland's QANTAS team up the front. Sunderland however was unwilling to go along with this as it was not really his team's role to chase, as well as having Cameron Hughes in the break.

Once again, the break was caught although Wong tried an immediate counterattack with 3 others - Martin Derganc (Slovenia), Jan Hordijk (Websdale) and Huw Pritchard (Dupont). They again built a lead of 25 seconds but were caught with 4 to go. After this it was always going to come down to a bunch sprint, albeit slightly uphill, and once again it was the flying Dutchman, Max van Heeswijk (Websdale) who triumphed over QANTAS One World's Franky van Hasebroucke, with another Websdale rider, Jans Koerts in third spot.

There was an incident in the sprint that sent the Dutch team managers into a spin, when Jans Koerts was relegated to last position in the bunch, and given a 30 second time penalty for receiving a handsling from a teammate with 300 m to go. However, on closer inspection of the video, the commissaires ruled that it was in fact the Sportscover team who were the culprits - in this case it was Jeremy Hunt who had received the handsling from Dan Smith

Max however was his usual ebullient self, and delighted to win his 3rd stage of the Classic, taking his total to 11 wins in four years. The time bonus he gained from it moved him to within 11 seconds of the leader, Stangelj, though he is still in third spot. He also increased his hold on the mauve sprinters jersey, now leading Koerts and van Haesebroucke by 5 points. He is obviously a threat for the overall classification, although he confessed that getting there by 20 second time bonuses is a "cheap" way of doing it. "Making up 10 or 20 seconds in a 13 km time trial is much harder than this," he said. Who does he consider to be the main threats? "I don't know how all the riders time trial - Rumsas will be there, and Hall, but the others I don't know."

The likelihood of an Australian victory will rest with either Sunderland, Hall or Hickson, although their teams would have to help each other if they are to overcome the Poles and Slovenians. Tomorrow will certainly sort things out when the riders tackle the category one climbs of Jamberoo Pass and Cambewarra Mountain - both quite steep and longer than Bumble Hill. However, in the meantime they have to negotiate 40 laps of the hotdog circuit in Coogee this evening, the "showcase" event of the Classic.