Top 10 on final stage with Josie Nelson, as Team Picnic PostNL and Eleonora Ciabocco win white jersey

The last of three days of racing at the Tour Down Under saw the women’s peloton take on a hilly circuit around Stirling. With constantly rolling roads and little time to recover, it was set to be a tough and attritional day in the saddle. Team Picnic PostNL headed into the stage looking to defend the white jersey of best young rider, which was on the shoulders of Eleonora Ciabocco, and go for the best stage result possible in the finale.

It was a hard afternoon of action where the peloton thinned down over the laps but the team was always attentive at the head of the group, following the dangerous attacks. Coming onto the final lap some strong positioning work by Rachele Barbieri and Becky Storrie saw Ciabocco and Josie Nelson well to the fore as the road ramped up for one last time towards the line. Ciabocco did one last pull in the last kilometres to put Nelson in the wheel of the race leader, before the young Brit gave everything she had in the uphill sprint; crossing the finish with a solid tenth place on the day.

Ciabocco crossed the line in a group behind but had more than enough time, and in fact even extended her lead, to win the youth classification at the Tour Down Under with Team Picnic PostNL.

After the finish Nelson said: “It was a really fast and technical race today with a lot of climbing but we rode together all the time as a team. We covered a lot of the attacks and then on the final lap we focused on saving ourselves for the finish. The girls were fantastic today, always keeping me safe in the front and I finished it off with a top ten in the sprint.”

Youth classification winner Ciabocco continued: “I think today wasn’t my best day. I really suffered from the beginning. Last year it was hard with just two laps on this course so today was even harder with the extra laps. Josie is really strong on circuits like this, so we tried our best to go for the stage result with her in the final. I’m really happy to be able to have won the white jersey with the team at the Tour Down Under; it’s the first one that I have ever won and a nice start to the season.”

Team Picnic PostNL coach Matt Winston concluded: “Over the last three days we did things well but we also saw bits that we could work on and we saw improvements on that today which was really nice. On the first day we just missed being together and looking for each other, and yesterday we missed a bit on the first time up Willunga but we corrected it for the second time which was nice. Today we showed some good teamwork; we really fought for each other and battled for each other. I think we can sign off from the race that things went in a good way today. We made steps throughout the course of the three days which is always what we look to do and want to achieve. It’s nice to finish with two top tens in the race and the win the white jersey with Eleonora.”