Strung out peloton along the dirt #SunTour pic.twitter.com/z7yPbEbt8H
— Jayco HeraldSun Tour (@HeraldSunTour) February 2, 2018
As this video shows, Aqua Blue Sport were on the front driving and had already split the field very significantly. But then the racing was stopped just as they were dishing out the pain.
Herald Sun Tour stage 2 was stopped on gravel section
He may still be in the yellow jersey after stage 2 of the Herald Sun Tour but Lasse Norman Hansen was still not happy at the finish.
The Dane was 3rd in Wednesday’s prologue, losing victory by just seven tenths of a second and after overshooting a corner.
And when he won yesterday from a nine-man sprint he took the race lead.
On today’s stage 2 the organisers were forced to reroute the stage at the last moment.
That change added a 7km gravel section, some 100km from the finish.
A breakaway was clear when the racing hit the dirt road. And Aqua Blue Sport were on the front of the chasing peloton eager to press hard.
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The riders were hoping to split the race and keep the yellow jersey. But they also wanted to eliminate some of the top climbers.
Chief amongst them was Esteban Chaves (Mitchelton-Scott), below.
That would give its climber Larry Warbasse a chance in the overall when the road goes up tomorrow.
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Chaves, top, was one of the riders Aqua Blue Sport was hoping to drop on the gravel section. Mads Pedersen wins, continuing Trek-Segafredo’s brilliant start to the season. Hansen is still in yellow.
However, the race organisers were worried when the surface of the gravel road broke up after the breakaway and first vehicles reached that section.
And so they made the decision to stop the race. The action was neutralised until the end of the gravel stretch.
There the race was restarted and the breakaway’s lead reinstated.
And while the escape was reeled in later and Hansen finished in the lead group to keep yellow, he wanted to race over the gravel.
He had crashed early in the stage, see video below, but had recovered well.
And he believed his team, and perhaps Trek-Segafredo, could have split the field to pieces, as was the case in yesterday’s crosswinds.
"We had the front as a team and had Trek with us like yesterday,” he said at the finish.
“And if we would have raced from there, we would have had 10 guys left at the finish just like yesterday. And I am sure I would have been there.”
He did not believe the gravel was too unsafe for racing on.
“It wasn't dangerous. There were some soft patches. But as long as you straight lined them you were fine,” he said.
“I imagined some of the riders haven't tried racing a road bike on dirt before. We do it a lot on Denmark. So I was used to it and I have done it a lot earlier."
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