Ten days ago young Australian Nate Hadden didn’t even know he was going to be riding in the SBS Bank Tour of Southland, but he’ll start the first open road stage of this year’s race in the orange jersey.
Hadden answered a late call up from team mate Kiaan Watts into the PowerNet team and he’s pleased he did after a third-placed finish in the stage one street race around Invercargill’s Queens Park was enough to give him a slim lead in both the general classification and under 23 categories.
“It’s my first time here, I’ve heard lots about the tour and how great it is, so it’s a privilege to be here and to be in the lead,” Hadden said.
“We had high hopes for the (team time trial) this morning, but just missed out so we came in with lots of confidence that we could do well in the crit and we executed well.”
Dunedin’s James Gardner (Creation Signs-MitoQ-NZ Cycling Project) claimed stage one honours for the second time in two years, the big under 23 rider getting into the decisive break alongside Hadden and second-placed Samuel Jenner (Central Benchmakers-Willbike) midway through the 10 lap stage.
Earlier, the pace was set by New Zealand endurance rider Tom Sexton (Macaulay Ford-GoodTech) in front of his home Invercargill crowd, alongside Timaru’s James Wilson.
Once Sexton had secured the early sprint points on offer, the race powered its way to the finish, with the breakaway trio of Gardner, Jenner and Hadden doing well to hold a 20sec almost all the way to the finish line.
“I saw two guys go up the road and I knew they’d be quite dangerous, so I jumped across as quickly as possible and fortunately we made it to the line,” Hadden, who is in the early stages of his professional career in Europe, said.
“There's a lot of racing to come and some hard stages, definitely, the tour is only young so we’ll see what we can do.”
Creation Signs-MitoQ-NZ Cycling Project, with 2022 winner Josh Burnett in the lineup, put the peloton on notice early with a strong ride in the prologue team time trial, finishing six seconds clear of PowerNet, with Transport Engineering Southland-Deep South third.
Gardner did not finish with the top four riders from his team, otherwise he would have been able to add the orange and pink jerseys to the wardrobe ahead of tomorrow’s 166km stage two from Invercargill to Lumsden.
Glenn Haden (Couplands-Cycling Tom) leads the over 35 classification, which has been dedicated to the late Ken Lasenby.