It was another day on the attack for Drapac Professional Cycling’s Will Clarke, earning the Santos Tour Down Under’s Most Competitive prize for the second consecutive day in Stage 2 of the UCI WorldTour event.
Drapac was active once Clarke was eventually caught on the second lap around the Stirling circuit, with Wes Sulzberger and Travis Meyer on the final lap.
Sulzberger was the best finisher for the team, in 16th place on the same time as stage winner Diego Ulissi (Lampre-Merida). Sulzberger joins brother Bernard and Darren Lapthorne 21 seconds behind overall leader Simon Gerrans (Orica-GreenEdge).
Clarke flew the flag for the team out on the road for the 150km stage, once again trying his luck on the circuit which earned him fame and first WorldTour victory. Clarke escaped at the five kilometre mark, with UniSA’s Campbell Flakemore and Trek’s Boy van Poppel.
“It’s three years in a row now that I’ve been in the breakaway at Stirling,” he said. “Unfortunately it just hasn’t happened like the first time in 2012 when I won the stage.”
“It was the plan for one of us – either myself or Travis Meyer to be in the breakaway. Travis nearly got there but it came back and then I went away with the next one.”
Meantime, Clarke took maximum points for the King of the Mountains climbs, ending the day on equal points as classification leader, Adam Hansen (Lotto Belisol). Clarke also added another seven points to his Sprint Classification.
With Flakemore back in the bunch, Clarke was eventually caught just as he and van Poppel entered the 21km finishing circuit for the penultimate time.
The final lap around Stirling continued to whittle down the numbers in the lead group, with a crash in the final kilometres forcing a further split in the tail end.
“It caused everyone to swerve a bit and everyone lined out from there and it was single file to the finish,” Wes Sulzberger explained. “We pretty much stayed in the same position in the last kilometre, I moved up a few spots in the end because I was going to lose time.
“I didn’t really know how I felt until the last bit. I felt a bit like everyone else was looking.”
Clarke is not predicting a third day straight up the road for himself, with the Corkscrew climb on Thursday set to shake up the GC.
“I think in the next day or two I’ll have to take it easy, at the moment I’m feeling a bit tired,” he admitted. “Hopefully I can back up for another attack later in the race.
“Everyone’s pretty happy, we’ve showed ourselves over the last couple of days. I think you’ll see one of us up there again,” he said looking ahead to Corkscrew.
“We’ve got some strong climbers – Lappers [Darren Lapthorne] is climbing really well so as long as we can get him in there in a good position I think he can do something tomorrow.”
Drapac snapshot results:
Stage 2 –
1. Diego Ulissi (Ita) Lampre-Merida 3:52:14
16. Wes Sulzberger (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling 0:00:00
33. Jonathan Cantwell (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling
34. Bernard Sulzberger (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling
35. Darren Lapthorne (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling
86. Travis Meyer (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling
92. Robbie Hucker (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling
124. Will Clarke (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling 0:07:05
General Classification after Stage 2 –
1. Simon Gerrans (Aus) Orica GreenEdge 7:12:31
19. Wes Sulzberger (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling 0:00:21
24. Darren Lapthorne (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling
31. Bernard Sulzberger (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling
59. Robbie Hucker (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling
70. Jonathan Cantwell (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling 0:02:38
71. Travis Meyer (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling
133. Will Clarke (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling 0:16:13
Sprint Classification –
1.Simon Gerrans (Aus) Orica GreenEdge 31
6. Will Clarke (Aus) Drapac Professional Cycling 15
King Classification –
1. Adam Hansen (Aus) Lotto Belisol 20
2. Will Clarke (Aus) Drapac Professional 20
Team Classification –
1. Lampre – Merida 21:38:28
10. Drapac Professional Cycling 0:00:08