Irish cycling team Aqua Blue Sport is in Australia for a racing and training stint. It got its season underway with a mixed bag in Melbourne. Above, Peter Koning took the sprint classification.
Irish cycling team Aqua Blue Sport at Race Melbourne
Aqua Blue Sport has gotten its 2018 season off to an aggressive start in Australia, with a sprint classification win.
However, one of its riders Aaron Gate also took a tumble in the Race Melbourne event yesterday.
The Kiwi was forced to abandon and has since been diagnosed with a fractured wrist.
He will likely be forced out of competition for several weeks but should make a speedy recovery.
On the positive side, Peter Koning went on the attack in the race, won by Ireland’s Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe).
And with the breakaway mopping up all of the sprint classification points, Koning came out on top and took that prize.
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The escape very nearly made it all the way; only be recaptured on the final 5.3km lap, of 22. And the catch paved the way for the bunch sprint won by Bennett.
Koning was with six others up the road; George Bennett (LottoNL-Jumbo), José Gonçalves (Team Katusha Alpecin), Nathan Elliot (KordaMentha Real Estate), Nathan Earle (Israel Cycling Academy), Owain Doull (Team Sky) and Chad Haga (Team Sunweb).
They had almost one minute after five laps of the Albert Park motor racing track.
The Aqua Blue Sport man took points at the sprint prime on lap 5 and 10. And he was first over the line on lap 15 to wrap up that prize on the day and secure a trip to the podium.
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Koning was among the last three men standing out front as the others dropped back to the peloton.
However, the sprinters’ teams were intent on reeling in all of the escapees, and so it came to pass.
But Dutchman Koning was happy with his aggressive day out.
"It was an exciting race, really fast from the start,” he said. “I did a good pre-season with a lot of beach racing.
“And fortunately the legs felt good after the first couple of laps and I managed to get in the break.
“In the first intermediate sprint we were caught off guard and didn’t realise there was a sprint.
“But I was still second and then decided to go for the sprint classification. I got enough points to win it and this result gives me good motivation.”
While caught with 3km remaining, Koning said he did his best to stay away.
"You always need to believe that you can win when you’re in a breakaway,” he said.
“But when we hit two laps to go with just 30 seconds advantage you know it’s going to be really hard to finish it off.
“I tried in the last lap to go full-gas and tried to attack in the last kilometres with a Katusha rider.
“But the peloton was coming super-fast and against the headwind we ended up losing a lot of time.
“I couldn’t get the win but the important thing is that I’m happy with the form and with how the legs felt. So I’m really looking forward to the season.
“Unfortunately we lost Aaron to a crash. But that is bike racing and we need to look ahead to the next races.”
Next up for the ProContinental team is the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race on Sunday. It also emerged yesterday the squad has picked up and invite to Liege Bastogne Liege in April.
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