Jack Beckinsale claims Avanti's second stage of the Adelaide Tour

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The final day 82km dash around Newton ended with Jack Beckinsale (Avanti) out sprinting Ryan Thomas (GPM) and teammate Joe Cooper while Brodie Talbot was untroubled in claiming the 2014 Adelaide Tour. Felicity Wardlaw (Bicycle Superstore) held onto her race lead to record her first overall victory at NRS level. 

"Yeah it was a good win, my first for the season so I'm really happy," Beckinsale said after winning the stage. 

"The idea for me was to sit in and look for the sprint but we had Mark O'Brien in there riding pretty strong on the front. I saw a few time gaps from the Drapac crew because they were riding for Wes (Sulzberger) up the road. Once Joe (Cooper) and one of the other Drapac boys came across the break I was pretty confident that we would stay away."

Talbot's winning margin was 24 seconds ahead of Wes Sulzberger (Drapac), who was the first leader of the race, and a further 44 seconds in front of Keagan Girdlestone (Lightsview).

Early in the race a breakaway of five formed six laps into the 22 laps the riders were confronted with which including Sulzberger. his brother and teammate Bernard Sulzberger and Beckinsale who bridged a 10 second gap to the five riders of Darren Lapthorne (Drapac Racing), Mark O’Brien (Avanti Racing), Matthew Jackson and Thomas and Angus Tobin (Search2Retain).

With the  three Drapac riders in the break, the gap quickly extended to 26 seconds as Sulzberger became the virtual leader on the road ahead of Talbot but the BudgetForklifts team was in control.  Drapac tried to send another rider in Lachlan Norris to the leaders and was joined by Cooper with just four laps remaining.

As the bell was rung, the leaders had a gap of just nine seconds and were left to fight it out for the final stage of the Adelaide Tour but with their advantage cut down by the chasing bunch, there was no dramatic change to the overall classification.

A clearly elated Talbot explained it was far from an easy day in the saddle: "It's awesome, I'm so stoked with it, it was a great team effort today. It all came together and we were able to pull it off. We just wanted to try and keep a nice light tempo all day. It made up a bit nervous having Wes (Sulzberger) up there but we all stayed together to stay on top of things.

"Joe Cooper has the most horsepower in the NRS so once he got across the break it made us a bit nervous but with my team behind me we were able to keep things in check.

"In the end we just tried to race to the line and if I could do that I was fairly confident that we would stay within the time gap that we needed."

Final Women's result

Felicity Wardlaw (Bicycle Superstore) proved too strong across the four stages to take the first women's NRS event of 2014, the Jarvis Subaru Adelaide Tour.

Wardlaw, 36-years-of-age, rode herself into the Tour lead following her solo victory in Friday’s Woodside road race and maintained a 25 second lead to stage one victor Ruth Corset (Holden Women’s Cycling) throughout Saturday and Sunday’s 42km criterium and 60km kermesse.

"Our goal for this tour was to win the team’s classification and we want to keep that consistent throughout the NRS and the first stage set us up quite nicely with 4 of us in the top 10, which really set us up well for the rest of the tour so we had a lot of cards to play and it just pulled off so well in stage 2 and we carried that forward yesterday and today we finished of with a pretty solid effort on the Kermesse," Wardlaw said.

Kendelle Hodges (Jayco/Apollo/VIS) was third overall, 54 seconds in arrears.

Wardlaw started the 2014 season by winning the 2014 time trial national championship in January and has continued her good from into April.

"It's always a tough one to finish off with and I must say this is the first time I've been in the yellow jersey and it’s very nerve wracking, but we had a lot to team support out there today and we were determined not to let it go," Wardlaw said.

Hometown girlJessica Mundy (SASI) broke free from the fast paced peloton in Cambelltown with just three of 16 laps left to race to claim the win while her teammate Annette Edmondson took out the bunch sprint for second place, ahead of Lizzie Williams (Specialized Securitor).

"It was really special to win the final stage of the tour and to have the team of SASI girls to help me out it was," Mundy said after the win.

"I think I came good perfectly towards the end, it was definitely good to have the legs back particularly after (what happened in) the second stage. It’s definitely great to have team SASI and Tim (Dekker) helps us out and everyone has been riding well withn the team so it’s been great.”

"We worked well as a team and we were trying to get Nettie (Edmondson) up for the sprint jersey. We had Alex Manly and Danielle McKinnirey doing a great job in the bunch and we had a plan that if no one had gone away towards the end that we'd try to get a break up the road.

"This is my first NRS win so it's pretty special and it’s great to be able to achieve it with the SASI team on home soil, so yeah, it’s great."

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