Philip Deignan leads the Team Sky train in the People's Choice Classic in Adelaide, the curtain raiser for the Tour Down Under.
By Gerard Cromwell
Ireland’s Philip Deignan has made an impressive start to his two-year stint with Team Sky, doing a lot of work in the final 15km to ensure a bunch sprint in the People’s Choice Classic on his debut ride with the British squad in Australia today.
Deignan and Welsh teammate Geraint Thomas hit the front with seven laps to go in the 50km criterium in Adelaide and brought back an early breakaway containing Axel Domont (Ag2r-La Mondiale), Nathan Haas (Garmin-Sharp), Luca Wackermann (Lampre-Merida) and Anthony Roux (FDJ).
The Sky lead-out train placed their Aussie sprinter Chris Sutton at the head of affairs in the final lap of the race that acts as a curtain raiser for the Tour Down Under.
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Sutton, who crashed on lap seven and suffered cuts to his knee and elbow, could only manage fourth, behind winner Marcel Kittel of Giant Shimano, Andre Greipel (Lotto Belisol) and up and coming Aussie sprinter Caleb Ewan of UniSA.
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Deignan even made a surprise trip to the podium afterwards, having picked up the final prime of the day, and later spoke about his debut race of the season
“I came out here early with Geraint, Ian, Luke and Bernie,” said Deignan yesterday.
“We arrived on New Year’s Eve and once we got over the time difference we had plenty of time to get a good big block of training done together in the heat over the past few weeks.
“I’ll be here to support Richie (Porte) and ‘G’ (Thomas) in the Tour Down Under and I’m really looking forward to it. Richie was third in the Australian championships last week and ‘G’ is going very well too so hopefully we can get a good result to start the season well.”
He eventually finished in 111th place, some 1:49 down.
However, the Donegal man will not be concerned with his own individual results on this trip to Australia but will be much more focussed on doing his job for the team and building his condition to get into the kind of form he showed throughout all of last season.
With temperatures in Adelaide cooling slightly and the risk of bush fires forcing a cancelation of stage 1 hopefully subsiding, Deignan will line up for his first stage race of the season on Tuesday at the Tour Down Under.
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