26th January – Stage 6: Adelaide – Adelaide
The final day of action at the Tour Down Under saw a fast race, where the peloton took on 20 laps of a circuit around Adelaide. Team Picnic PostNL set out with the goals of trying to take some bonus seconds with Oscar Onley to move up on GC and to set up Tobias Lund Andresen for the expected sprint finish. With an early break of three going, and despite an attempt to bridge over later from Onley, the chance of bonus seconds disappeared so all of the team’s focus went into bringing Lund Andresen into the finale. As the laps ticked by the team held their position but the intensity and nervousness in the bunch in the closing 15 kilometres made for a hectic run-in where the team lost each other. Unfortunately, it meant Lund Andresen was quite far back and after being held up a small amount by the crash at one kilometre to go he had to move up in the wind which cost energy for the sprint. Coming around the last corner in seventh place, that’s where Lund Andresen would finish come the line; while Onley secured fourth in the overall general classification of the race.
Lund Andresen expressed: “It was a fast day today where we tried to stay near the front of the peloton for most of the stage. I think everything was going according to plan until around four laps to go where we weren’t sitting together as much as we should have been and that resulted in us being out of position with around one lap to go. Then in the final after the crash I had to move up in the wind so didn’t quite have it in the legs in the end. I tried to gamble to move up around the last corner to try and battle for the win, but that’s also the risk then when you don’t get the spot in the wheel – you just have 500 metres in the wind – so it was quite hard come the sprint to the line.”