The final turn in the GC battle at the Women’s Santos Tour Down Under

There is just one stage of the women's racing at the Santos Tour Down Under left and one final chance to claim the title in the race's first year as part of the Women's WorldTour. While Alex Manly’s (Jayco-AlUla) stage 2 victory means she is sitting in ochre, her rivals are still close enough to detect the scent of victory wafting tantalisingly in their direction.

The three-stage race started off with a crosswind-heavy coastal sprint and then moved onto a lumpy and short but sharp stage 2. It now delivers a climbing finale with the brutal slopes of the Corkscrew topping out little more than 7km from the finish.

It will be the final skirmish in the GC battle which took flight on stage 2, the shortest of the race at 90 km, but with enough kick in the climbs to deliver 1631m of elevation gain. There was a fierce attack from three-time winner Amanda Spratt on Mount Lofty, which was ultimately caught within the final kilometre of racing and with Manly winning and teammate Ruby Roseman-Gannon also in the top four, the advantage turned in Jayco-AlUla’s favour.

Before the stage, the Australian team’s Head Sport Director Martin Vestby had flagged that the squad would be prepared for aggressive racing, which was evident in their reaction to Spratt’s move, first with the efforts to hook on the back and then, when that didn’t work, by having their two key riders in the final chase group.

Still Vestby was clear that even before stage 2, that while Monday mattered it was Tuesday’s final stage that had the terrain that would really make the difference.

"You're winning the GC tomorrow,” Vestby told Cyclingnews Monday morning. “I think everybody knows that the final climb up the Corkscrew will be the decisive one for the general classification. But today sets everything up,” he said before the stage that put two of his team’s riders in the top four.

The closest rider to Manly in the overall classification is stage two runner-up Georgia Williams (EF Education-TIBCO-SVB) at eight seconds. When speaking to Cyclingnews before the stage, the rider from New Zealand flagged Monday as a day where “she might give it a go” as the rolling terrain suited her, but she played down any suggestion that it may play into a GC focus – though after her stage 2 result who knows whether or not that could change.

A clear and acknowledged threat on the overall, however, is Grace Brown (FDJ Suez) and judging by Monday's efforts to chase Spratt down after her attack, she has a committed and strong team to back her push and she too is only eight seconds back in third place. Then it is Manly's teammate Ruby Roseman-Gannon at 13 seconds back, giving the team two powerful cards to play. Spratt is next with a 14 second margin. Not too much to overcome given the climbing strength on display on stage 2 and she certainly hasn’t give up on the prospect of a fourth title.

What's more the entire top ten is within 20 seconds of the lead, so riders like NIcole Frain (Australian National Team) and Danielle De Francesco (Zaaf) and Krista Doebel-Hickok (EF Education- Tibco-SVB) also shouldn't be counted out.

The conditions

One of the features that so often seems to be as big a determinant of the outcome as the course is the weather, namely the heat with the dry hot weather leaving even the Australian riders who have had time to acclimatise with a challenge on their hands. Then there are the European riders who possibly just days before were in the midst of a cold winter.

Some of the steps riders are taking to try and mange the heat have been obvious from the moment they came out to do a few quick laps before the Schwalbe Criterium on Saturday, coming out on to the course before the racing with ice vests strapped on or – the method that’s bound to see hosiery sales soar in Adelaide each January –  a stocking filled with ice shoved down the back.

All those tricks, and many more, are bound to be fully utilised on the final stage with temperatures forecast to hit 38°C in Adelaide on Tuesday.

What the riders will be tackling

The final stage may be just 93.2km long, but there will be no cruising through for any rider in the field because as if the temperatures weren’t enough, the Corkscrew surely is.

The stage starts in central Adelaide, heading for the Athelstone in race neutral before climbing to Cudlee Creek, contesting the first sprint points in Lobethal and the heading towards the stage 2 start location of Birdwood before looping back to Gumeracha and the second sprint. 

Then it is on toward Montacute, where 45 hectares of bush was burnt in a bushfire over the weekend, and back toward Campbelltown and the Corkscrew climb, which tops out just 7.5km from the final finish line. It may be just 2.3km long but with an average gradient of 9.2% and a maximum of 24.4%, it could do a lot of damage in a short time.