After a couple of long, tough days the Crocodile Trophy arrived at Skybury Coffee Plantation yesterday – and no doubt the cafe was doing a roarind trade in coffees, milkshakes and other luxury food items.
The Queen Stage from Atherton to Skybury was once again decided in a finish sprint between Urs Huber and the Belgian Sebastien Carabin. The Swiss race leader Huber claims stage 5 with Carabin staying hot on his wheel.
Carabin was glued to Urs’ wheel today.
Stage five from Atherton to Skybury Coffee Plantation is the longest stage in the 2016 Crocodile Trophy and with the elevation profile much flatter than on previous days the race today was full of tactics, fast turns and had riders get a real Outback experience.
Van Aelbrock is holding his position.
After the past days in Atherton with so many metres of elevation to climb and singletrack to race along, Stage 5 was a true “Outback stage” and this year’s Queen Stage of the Crocodile Trophy. The day had 130km to race and riders spoke of extreme heat on the open dirt highways, head winds towards the finish, rough terrain and the occasional cooling river crossings.
At the front, race leader Urs Huber tried everything to get away from his biggest opponent, Sebastien Carabin, who was able to stay on his wheel, withstanding all the attacks from the strong Swiss National Marathon Champion.
Van Vleuten hasn’t had the best of luck.
A bit of bad luck once again for our elite woman, Annemiek van Vleuten. She and the top two in the amateur category, Lincoln Carolan and Daniel Beresford missed a turn, which side-tracked them onto an additional 20km of track before arriving safely – albeit exhausted – at the finish. Annemiek van Vleuten thus drops into third position overall in the elite women’s classification with a gap of 1h23 to Pirard and Lincoln Carolan and Daniel Beresford once again swap leader jerseys – Carolan will race stage six in the amateur and Beresford in the Australia leader jersey.
Alice Pirard was the first woman across the line again at Skybury increases her overall lead with Ruth Corset in second today. Overall Pirard now leads by 1h17 ahead of the Australian Corset.
“I knew the finish from last year and was in front at the deciding moment and then there was no passing me anymore. I did have a slight crash today, nothing serious, just a bit of lack in concentration,” said Huber. “Today was hard, extremely long and windy at the end. It is also relatively hot and just long. The stage didn’t have many vertical metres, but it was the length that was tough.”
“Today I just tried to stay with Urs. He had a good day and it was very fast – he tried to attack constantly, but I felt good and could hold on. It was very tactical, because he knew the track at the finish and I didn’t, he attacked and passed me in the the final singletrack and it was not possible to go past him anymore, but I stayed close, so it’s good.” said Carabin after the stage. “The next three stages will be interesting, it’s hard for me, because he knows this race so well and also most stages, so I don’t really know when to attack. I’ll just keep putting the pressure down and we’ll see what’s possible.
Beresford fords a river at the Crocodile Trophy.
Daniel Beresford was tired at the finish, and reflected on the extra kilometres he had done.
“Today was a long day, a couple of us [Beresford, Carolan, van Vleuten] raced 150 instead of the 130km. We took a wrong turn. It was our fault, all three of us missed the sign. It was well marked, but we all missed it doing 45km/h, swapping turns, trying to get some time. Well, I ran out of water and managed to find a creek about 15km before the last feed and just dived into it. Then we made it to here. I think a lot of people had trouble today with flats and things like that so it may even itself out in the general classification. It’s a tough race. It’s hard backing it up day after day.”