Aussie ace snatches Cholet TT

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Tiffany Cromwell issued a warning to her older rivals in this year's Route de France with victory in today's Cholet time trial. The Australian narrowly edged out overall leader Ina Teutenberg by less than a second to cement her advantage as the race's best young rider.

After victory in stage one yesterday, Teutenberg made the overall lead her own and now holds a five-second gap over the young Australian. "I was just a fraction of a second behind the stage winner and it's always a bit disappointing to miss a victory by so little," said Teutenberg.

"However, getting the race lead is really important, too. I am a little surprised to be going so well in the time trials right now but that makes it doubly pleasing."

The experienced German explained, "I did have some time references from my team-mates for the time trial, and the course suited me. In any case, there was only one real tactic in a time trial like this, which was to go all out from the start."

Despite looking good in the event thus far, Columbia-HTC's sprinter isn't getting ahead of herself in terms of the overall win. "I don't know if I'll be able to hold the lead right the way through to the finish. There are some pretty important climbs at the end of the race and as a sprinter, when you come into form your climbing's always the thing that gets better last. So I'll take it on the day by day, and see what happens."

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