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Herald Sun Tour, Australia, October 14-24, 2004
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Matt Goold's Sun Tour diary
Although it's one of the two biggest stage races his home country hosts, Australian Matthew Goold is riding the Malaysia Airlines Herald Sun Tour of Provincial Victoria as part of the multi-national Active for Life Team, alongside Canadians Eric Wohlberg and Dominique Perras, New Zealander Glen Mitchell and Jorge Libonatti from Uruguay.
Hailing from the Southern Australian state of Victoria, Goold is a former state road champion whose role in the team will be to ride support for Wohlberg in the hunt for stage victories.
Stage 7 - October 19: Creswick - Daylesford, 154.8 km
Catching a ride
Today was really hard! The long stage yesterday, coupled with dead, narrow roads today made for some very tough going, and there were a few high-profile withdrawals during the day.
From an Active For Life team perspective, things are still looking promising. We should have moved up to second in the overall teams' classification, with Glen, Dom and myself finishing in the lead bunch - approximately 20 seconds behind the solo winner. Glen managed to finish third in the bunch sprint, so that's two podium finishes in as many days.
I originally missed the major break at roughly 80km into the stage, but found myself on Luke Robert's wheel as he attempted to bridge the gap. Luke rode an amazing 10km to get back on to the leading group. I felt guilty sitting in behind him as he did all the work, but in the end I have to think of the Active For Life team as a whole, and this guy is really strong and a genuine threat to our overall success.
Tomorrow we're in Bendigo, and we're looking forward to judging the Active For Life school banner competition. Hope to see you there!
