Home team Jayco-AlUla were looking to be the stars of the Santos Tour Down Under, but on a testing stage to Willunga Hill, the best they could manage was the most aggressive rider's award for Chris Harper and fourth on the stage and sixth overall for Luke Plapp.
Plapp attacked and surged repeatedly on the final climb of Willunga but he just couldn't shake eventual stage winner and race leader Jhonatan Narvaez (UAE Team Emirates XRG), last year's Willunga stage winner Oscar Onley (Picnic-PostNl) and Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe).
Plapp lost three seconds and missed out on any time bonuses in the sprint to the line atop Willunga but moved up from 16th to 6th overall ahead of the final stage in Adelaide.
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"I had really good legs. I think I was probably the strongest climber there today in terms of working on the front and trying to just activate the race. I think it was such a negative climb," Plapp said.
"I don't blame Narvaez for the way he rode. He's the fastest there, and he's got the sprint. I would have expected Onley and the likes of those boys to maybe ride for a bit more time, considering how close the race was behind, but I gave it everything I had.
"I'm never going to beat those guys in a bonus sprint, so it was either get away and win solo, or [try] to get as big as break as I can."
A disappointed Jayco-AlUla's sports director Mat Hayman told Cyclingnews, "We came in with big plans and didn't pull it off, but we tried."
The team were on point for the queen stage. Michael Hepburn joined the day's breakaway, taking pressure off the team behind. Then, once the move was caught leading into the first of two ascents of Willunga, Chris Harper attacked and was joined by teammate Mauro Schmid in a breakaway that lasted almost until the final ascent.
The other teams didn't take the bait, however.
The Jayco AlUla attack caused some chaos in the bunch, but Romo's Movistar team and UAE Team Emirates joined forces to try to close the gap.
"We wanted to make the first climb as hard as possible," Hayman said. "Ideally it wasn't Chris to go there, but he felt it and then Mauro jumped across. It was worth a shot at that point."
Plapp revealed that Harper and Schmid "weren't meant to go away as such".
"It worked well. It put pressure on the other teams to chase, and it created a loss of chaos in the back," Plapp said.
"Our main strategy was just to make that first climb really hard ... and to just slowly drop people out the back. But in the end, they were riding so strong they got away and it sort of achieved the same thing.
"It created a lot of stress and a lot of panic up the climb itself."
The effort didn't work out as intended, however, as Ineos Grenadiers came forward en masse in pursuit of the duo and split the peloton in a short crosswind section on the road to Willunga. Plapp ended up on the wrong side of the split.
"It has split there before in the past out of that corner," Hayman said. "But I didn't expect it with the wind today, it wasn't as windy."
Schmid and Harper were caught before the foot of the final climb of Willunga and the strongest riders came back together but for a moment, Plapp was stuck in the chase group. Luckily, Narvaez had also missed the split and so Plapp was confident the front group would come back.
"Plappy said it wasn't a problem because he was around Oscar Onley [Picnic-PostNl's GC leader] and I think Israel [Premier Tech] had a number of riders back there," Hayman said.
Plapp admitted he didn't expect the surge from Ineos and the split in the bunch, but when it happened, "I was just trying to keep cool. I was trying to recover and just compose myself. I didn't want to burn any matches I didn't need to before the climb. I was trying to save it for a massive six-minute effort up the climb.
"Credit to Ineos for taking it on and creating some chaos. But I was lucky. I was always on the wheels and actually didn't do any extra work to get back to the climbers."
Once Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe closed the gap to Harper with Plapp in tow, Romo was already on the attack with more than 2km still to climb. Harper was in position to go after Romo when he attacked just after the start of the ascent of Willunga.
"Massive set of cojones," Plapp said of the overnight race leader's move.
"To be honest, I thought that was absolute suicide. I was like, is he gonna ride away and this is gonna be one of the most impressive Willunga we've ever seen? Or is he gonna lose the bike race? Chapeau to him. He rode like a pretty big champion out there, and took the race by the scruff of the neck."
Plapp also tried to take on the race, leading the chase of Romo and trying to hurt his GC rivals. But nobody would help him make it a hard final two kilometres up Willunga.
Narvaez's final surge near the summit was too tough to beat. It was a disappointing result for Jayco AlUla but Plapp looked on the bright side.
"You dream big and try to ride well up here. I gave it the best I could," he said.
"I think there's a lot of positives to take from it and look towards the rest of the season and some better climbing performances now."
