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The Matt Lloyd Tour Down Under diary
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Twenty four year old Matt Lloyd, is the current Australian champion and hails from Melbourne. After graduating from the South Australia.com – AIS team in 2005, he went on to sign for the Belgian based Silence-Lotto team (previously Predictor-Lotto) of fellow Australians Cadel Evans, Robbie McEwen and Nick Gates. Now in his second year on the squad and after showing huge promise in his first year, Lloyd is looking set to have a stellar year on the ProTour circuit. He finished fourth at the Tour Down Under last year, and is eager to better that result this time around to hopefully grab the first ProTour leaders jersey of the year and thereby taking up where team-mate Evans left off last year. Follow his progression through the race here on Cyclingnews as he keeps you up to date with his daily Tour diary.
Tour Down Under classic
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Sundays race was quite good for me, we were lucky in that we knew that Robbie would either be up there or he wouldn’t so I just sat in the middle of the pack and kept out of trouble. I was happy that Rabobank took control of things in the end, it settled the race done and made it a bit easier for me, no yo-yoing in pace. In the end Robbie finished third in just his first race of the season, so a good start to the weeks racing.
Monday was a rest day, and it was spent riding relaxing and talking to the media.
Tuesday is when the racing really starts and I am confident that I can perform well over the next week. I have had a good pre-season of training. Due to the worlds and Lombardia, I had a pretty late end to the season which meant that I haven’t had to do too much intensity in training to bring myself up to a good level again. I am not saying that I am feeling in peak form, but I feel good. The next few days will be decisive and will tell us all more.
Matt
