No. 2 without 3: Sam Welsford has now also won stage 4 at the Tour Down Under. The Australian from Bora Hansgrohe was fastest in the peloton at Port Elliot, on his 28th birthday. “I'm speechless,” the birthday boy laughed after he finished. Mexican Isaac del Toro keeps his captain's shirt.
Stage four took the peloton from Murray Bridge to Port Elliot, a journey of over 136km.
Thanks to excellent work by his Bora teammates, Sam Welsford already has two sprint wins under his belt, but a strong sea breeze at Port Elliot made for a more chaotic sprint today.
Welsford lost the wheel of the locomotive Danny van Poppel, but he stole his wagon from the Ineos Narvaez-Viviani duo and then eventually finished it off for a third time. The Australian beat Biniyam Jermay and Lars Boven in the sprint race, and Belgian Milan Freitein finished fourth.
“I'm speechless,” laughs year-old Welsford. “It was a fast finish. I don't really know what happened. I came out of that last corner well, but I lost Danny. Then I used the other guys as a lead. This is the perfect start to the race. A year for our team.”
Mexican Isaac del Toro is still in the lead. He still has one second ahead of Jermay in the standings. In the last two stages, the end is uphill. “Today I didn’t want to take any risks,” the Emirati racer said. “I hope I will be good in the next two days.”
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