Cooper unbeatable in Border time trial

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Rebecca Wiasak (Suzuki Bontrager) has taken out Stage 2 in the women's time trial at the Battle on the Border. Wiasak edged out Katrin Garfoot (Pensar SPM Racing) by five-seconds while Taryn Heather (Jayco/Apollo-VIS) earned her way into third place, just eight-seconds back on the day's winner. 

"I'm stoked," said Wiasak. "Yesterday was an incredibly hard day, we had Emily Roper in the break for our team and that gave me the ability to sit into the group. Then I felt the need to chase once she came back which destroyed my legs, I joked with Taryn Heather when we were swapping off on the front that the time trail will be interesting as we're both pretty similar riders."

Yesterday's second-place finisher Ruth Corset (Pensar SPM Racing) pulled on the leader's jersey after a solid fourth-place ride in the TT and will start the afternoon criterium around Murwillumbah in the yellow leader's garment.

"I was only 10-seconds faster than Miranda, but it gives me an eight-second GC lead so I'm extremely happy with that and it puts us in a good position over the final two stages - it will be tough but we have a good team," said Corset.

Cooper earns another TT win in Murwillumbah

Joseph Cooper (Huon Salmon-Genesys Wealth Advisers) continued his strong run of time trial results with another dominant victory around the 9.3km circuit in Murwillumbah. Cooper blazed the course in 11:24.32 to beat the next-best placed rider and teammate Aaron Donnelly by 26-seconds. The stage marked another impressive ride from the entire Huon Salmon-Genesys squad with the Tasmanian outfit claiming the top four positions and finished with five riders insider the top-ten.

"It was awesome out there today, everything came together for me," said Cooper after his second NRS TT win of the year. The reigning New Zealand TT champion most recently crushed the field at the Woodside Tour de Perth just a few weeks ago.

Race leader Jack Haig did more than enough to consolidate his overall lead with a 12:03.00, putting time between himself and the remaining GC contenders. Adam Semple (Satalyst-Giant) put in an impressive display to move into third-overall courtesy of his ninth-place while Jai Crawford (Huon Salmon-Genesys) and Eric Sheppard (search2retain-health) both lost time.

Haig now leads teammate Crawford by 39-seconds while Semple leap-frogged Sheppard to move into third, 45-seconds in arreas. Sheppard dropped to fourth-overall and will start the late-afternoon criterium with a 48-second deficit to Haig.

"The team did really well getting the top four positions - I managed to put in a pretty decent time and stay in yellow and put a bit more time into my GC competitors,” said Haig who backed-up his impressive Tour de Perth TT result with a solid fourth-place at Battle on the Border.

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Women's NRS results