Sam Welsford (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) proved that he has evolved as a sprinter at the Tour Down Under, taking his second stage in a row and third win of the week in Tanunda on Wednesday.
The team pursuit Olympic champion not only crashed in the first five kilometres of the 128.8km stage 2 but was dropped on the final climb with 22km to go, yet managed to get back on and extend his lead in the overall classification with his victory.
"I always wear my heart on my sleeve out here, and I really wanted to show with the training I've been doing and the prep I've done over the winter that I can suffer on these harder days and still produce a good sprint at the end today," Welsford said.
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After his first stage win, Welsford credited a shift in coaching for his transformation.
"I have a new trainer now, and I've been targeting a lot of hours on the bike and lots of general fitness. I have a lot of power from the track in the legs, so ... that aerobic capacity is probably more my weakness, and improving that allows me to still do my good sprint [while] carrying fatigue."
His new training regime was put to the test on stage 2 with the final climb kicking up to a 12% gradient and attacks flying not only from outside GC contenders but there was also pressure from his rival sprint teams to drop him.
"They didn't make it easy for me on that climb," he said. "I knew they were going to start launching attacks, and we just tried to keep a steady pace. It ended up being probably a little bit harder than we expected."
It took the team some time, but between Laurence Pithie, Ryan Mullen and Ben Zwiehoff, Welsford was back in the fold with 15km to go.
"I had Ryan on me the whole time pacing so we knew if we got on, we'd be in for a sniff. I said to the boys, 'Get me on and I'm gonna bloody win this thing'. So we did. At that moment on the climb, I wasn't really thinking like that, because my legs were screaming.
"The boys did a mega job bringing me back, and then still managed to do a lead-out, which was pretty impressive."
Timing is everything in a bunch sprint, and Welsford said his first stage win on Tuesday wasn't perfect. Even though it worked out, he said he had gone too early, celebrated too early and almost lost to a hard-charging Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike).
In Tanunda he was far more patient.
"Danny [van Poppel] can go so long in these lead-outs, and I just have to really look for that moment that he really wants me to go ... I think I kicked off with 200 or maybe less. So I had a really good run, and I think I was just getting faster in the sprint. It was a good one."
The man from Perth was more than happy to pay back his team for burying themselves to deliver him to the line, and he was effusive in his praise.
"They believe in me and commit to me 100% on any day they can. My legs were screaming in that lead-out because I was already on the limit for so long. I just knew that I had to do it for them because they looked after me so well today."
Thursday's stage 3 will be a very different scenario for Welsford and his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team with two ascents of Knotts Hill, the second coming with just 5.6km to go. At 2.6km in length and an average grade of 8%, Welsford is most likely giving the ochre jersey of race leader away tomorrow.
"I think we'll be maybe helping other people tomorrow, but I think a lot of it is up to a lot of teams what they want to do. I'd say stage 3 is the hardest stage of the Tour."
Welsford heads into the day a little worse for wear after coming off his bike early in the stage following a touch of wheels.
"It's just a bit of bark off. I've had worse," he joked. "I just healed my left side from nationals, and now my right side is just the same, so at least I balanced it out a bit."
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