All attention will turn to the roads around Timaru after New Zealand’s Laurence Pithie won the WorldTour Cadel Evans Great Ocean Race in Geelong today.
Pithie, 21, became the youngest winner of the 174km one-day race, which needed a photo-finish to confirm in the Christchurch rider’s favour. His win is the first win by a New Zealand male in a UCI WorldTour one-day race.
The Groupama FDJ professional will return from Australia to compete in the Cycling New Zealand Road Nationals in Timaru on 8-10 February.
It proved a frantic sprint for the line with the young New Zealander edging Natnael Tesfazion (Lidl-Trek) by the slimmest of margins.
Pithie managed to burst off the wheel of fellow kiwi WorldTour rider Corbin Strong (Israel-premier Tech) and catch Tesfazion on the line, but had a lengthy wait before the Cantabrian was confirmed as the winner.
Strong held on for fourth after producing some outstanding performances in the recent Santos Tour Down Under in South Australia.
“That’s incredible. I got stuck behind Corbin who wanted me to go. But I knew I had to be patient. Patience is going be the key but I knew also it would be really easy to get caught on the barriers. Just managed to find my way through the gap and held on.”
Pithie said he did not know if he had won until the photo-finish decision.
”I was coming back at the leader but there was a rider coming on the outside but I just managed to hold on and lunge.”
Pithie said he was well positioned on the climbs and in a 50-strong group at the front of the race for the final lap.
It was his second one-day victory as a WorldTour rider after his win in the 45th edition of the UCI 1.1 race, Cholet – Pays de la Loire in France last year.
There were seven New Zealanders in today’s race including fourth placed Strong, Pithie’s FDJ-Groupama teammate Reuben Thompson, Dion Smith (Intermache-Wanty), Campbell Stewart (Team Jayco AlUla), George Bennett (Israel-Premier Tech) and Patrick Bevin (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL).