2012 Tour Down Under: Stage 3 Preview

I don’t know all that much about today’s stage except for this: 134+ kilometers of racing from the “cosmopolitan shopping hub” of Unley, through the breath taking countryside of both the McLaren Vale and the picturesque coastal scenes of the Fleurieu Peninsula before finishing in the seaside town of Victor Harbor. The climbing starts right out of the gate.

Weather for Stage 3 will be the coolest day of the Tour Down Under and most likely the windiest. There will be plenty of sunshine for the stage but the temperature will only be in the low-to-mid 20s. Competitors will be experiencing progressively cooler and windier conditions as they head south from Unley. The temperature will be about 25 degrees from the start to about the 40km mark, just before the climb to Sellicks Hills in 15-to-20km/h head-wind southerlies. From there the temperature will drop and southerlies will get stronger. When they climb to 300 metres in the Mt Compass area, the temperature will be about 22 degrees and southerly winds will increase to 20-to-30km/h, gusting to about 55km/h at times. On the downwhill run these winds will ease only a little but become a cross-breeze in the Myponga area and also between Mt Compass and Goolwa. For the remaining 45km to Victor Harbor the temperature and wind speed should be fairly constant, at about 23 degrees and 15-to-25km/h.

BMC will be working their tails off to defend Martin Kohler’s lead, something that the pundits were sure that the UniSA team would not have been able to do had William Clarke taken over the leader’s jersey.

There looks to be enough climbing today that some mountain goats could get away early, but daring descenders could catch up on the final run into Victor Harbor to make the relatively flat final kilometers interesting.