Brodie Chapman and Luke Plapp swept up the overall victories at the Tour of Bright on Sunday but shared around the spoils, with Katelyn Nicholson (Butterfield Ziptrak) and Levi Hone (Team Brennan) winning the final stage, which ended at the top of Mt Buffalo.
Chapman took the overall women's lead after a dominant performance in the stage 2 time trial, but the UAE Team ADQ rider had been clear at the start of the day that she wasn't going to be able to rest on her laurels after walking away from the race against the clock with a 44 second buffer on the GC to second-placed Talia Appleton (Praties).
There was an early break in the sunny 60km closing stage of Isla Carr, Melbourne to Warrnambool winner Katelyn Nicholson and Lucie Spurling, with the trio pulling out a gap of around three minutes before the final climb which delivers around 1000m of vertical ascent.
"I just went pretty hard from the bottom of climb, same as Tawonga yesterday because I knew we had to crack on to try and catch Katelyn who was quite a way up the road," Appleton told Cyclingnews. "She had quite a head start on us."
A group formed, with Appleton riding the front and Chapman sticking to the 'hold the wheel' plan, fighting to stick to it at times but relying on the flatter sections to keep in touch.
The rest of the lead trio fell away but Nicholson managed to hold firm, just, as Appleton crossed the line only two seconds back with Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto Generation rider Emily Dixon in third, on both the stage and overall.
Then next it was Chapman, who comfortably secured the Tour of Bright win with her fourth place on the stage, after only giving away two seconds of her lead to Appleton.
In the men's race it was the third year running that Plapp has swept up his home tour, which may not, as a club-run race, be a big result on paper but has huge stakes when it comes to local pride for the Jayco-AlUla rider who rallies the troops for the event each year. The Australian time trial champion secured the overall victory at the tour, which includes two summit finishes and a time trial, with third place on the closing stage behind the 19-year-old Hone and 38-year-old Mark O'Brien.
The leading duo with nearly 20 years between them had charged clear from a break of 17 at the start of the climb, keeping the pressure on from the base. The peloton on the other hand, who had already started the ascent with a deficit running into minutes, had other ideas.
"We sort of played cat and mouse at the bottom," Plapp told Cyclingnews. "It didn't really go full gas till I attacked after maybe 10k but it was an awesome race. It was a different dimension having the breakaway out the front with such a big group."
The break formed early and then O'Brien, the 2024 Melbourne to Warrnambool winner and Australian gravel champion, was also among a group of riders that jumped across. He then drove the pace hard on the climb with the 19-year-old Hone ultimately the only one able to hang on.
With games being played in he peloton but O'Brien just continuing to push on with Hone on his wheel, the lead seemed unassailable for a while but there was no stopping Plapp, who made it very clear at the start of the stage that he was determined to pull back the 46-second margin race leader Will Cooper had over him on the overall standings, even jovially crashing a pre stage interview to remind his main rival of that.
Picnic Post NL rider Oscar Onley, who ultimately finished 17th, had helped keep the pace in the bunch high early and then Plapp distanced Cooper before closing the gap to the leading duo. He made the junction just before the climbing gave way to a final downhill dash to the finish line at the mountain top chalet. Once there he seemed content to work on the front to make sure he took as much time on the overall as possible and then left Hone and O'Brien to sprint it out for the stage.
In the meantime Cooper may have had to watch first overall ride away but he kept a cool head, sticking close to the rest of his rivals to make sure he held the best podium spot possible. In the end he secured second on the GC with his 13th place on the stage while Plapp's Jayco-AlUla teammate Kelland O'Brien was third overall after coming sixth on the fast-paced climb.
Even with the 'cat and mouse' games at the bottom of the ascent in the men's race, the building level of the Tour of Bright, helped knock more seconds off both the Strava KOM and QOM for the Mt Buffalo climb.
First the women's time dropped, with Inez Cashman – who came fifth in the stage at six seconds back from Nicholson – taking the QOM with a time 52:05, cutting 35 seconds off the mark set by Sarah Gigante at the 2023 Tour of Bright. Appleton and Chapman also leapfrogged Gigante's previous record with times of 52:06 as did Emily Dixon with 52:07.
That came after Appleton fell a mere two seconds shy of taking Gigante's crown on Tawonga Gap on Saturday. Still, Plapp's scorching effort to narrow the gap to Cooper, who won from the break, saw him set a new KOM on stage 1 and he ended up doing it again on Sunday.
The Mt Buffalo time had been a big target for Plapp In 2023, when he smashed more than three minutes off the record, dropping it down to 41:18 for the 18km section averaging 5.6%. Though there was more to come this year as, even though the lead out at the bottom was missing, when the data was loaded it turned out that Plapp had – even with a less than ideal run – topped his previous best with a time of 41:04.
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