VENLO, Netherlands -- Former world track champion Greg Henderson became on Monday the first New Zealander for 29 years to win a stage of the Tour of Spain.
The Columbia-HTC rider crossed the finish line in Stage 3, 189 kilometers from Zutphen to Venlo, almost a bike length ahead of Slovenia's Borut Bozic. Spain's Oscar Freire was third.
The only previous victory by a New Zealand rider in the Tour of Spain's 73-year history was taken by Paul Jesson in 1980 in Santander.
"I was there in the last kilometer with (teammates) Andre Greipel and Marcel Sieberg on my wheel," Henderson told reporters. "But there was a little chicane, some other riders came through very fast, and I followed them.
"When I looked back I couldn't see Greipel on my wheel, so I went for it myself. In yesterday's buildup for a bunch sprint, we were going well but there was a headwind, we lost some riders and we had to mix it in again."
"But we practice our leadout, and when we get it right like today we're difficult to beat."
The victory was Columbia-HTC's 13th stage win of the season in one of the major European professional cycling stage races and the New Zealander's first.
"I didn't know until five days ago I was going to be racing here, first I was on the list (for the Tour of Spain) and then I wasn't, I'm not sure why," he said.
"But I continued training hard and then when they (the management) realised they needed somebody to help Greipel in the finals, I made it back in and got really focused again."
After three days racing, the stage one winner Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland remains in the overall lead. Henderson is in second place, six seconds back and Germany's Gerald Ciolek, who won stage two, is third eight seconds down.
After four days' racing in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, the race returns to Spain on Wednesday. The race finishes in Madrid on Sept. 20.
No comments:
Post a Comment