Tour of Toowoomba: Avanti cruise to TTT victory

Avanti Racing continued its dominance in the NRS as is added a Team Time Trial victory to its 2014 win. It is no three stages, three wins for Avanti at the Tour of Toowoomba and the top three on the overall classification.

BudgetForklifts were the only team within one minute of the blue express while African Wildlife Safaris were third, 1:05 minutes down on Avanti in the morning race against the clock.

Oceania time trial champion and 2013 New Zealand national time trial champion Joe Cooper led the team across the line to stop the clock in 23:39.4, recording an average of 50km p/hr across the flat 20 kilometre course.

Jack Haig's lead in the Tour remained 13 seconds ahead of Cooper while teammate Mark O'Brien moved up into third position, 22 seconds in arrears, to overtake Brendan Canty (health.com.au-Search2Retain).

"The team worked really well," said Cooper. "We started strong; it was unfortunate to lose [Neil] van der Ploeg before he took a turn with a mechanical, meaning we were down to five for a good 18km of the race.

"We put in a really good turn of speed and managed to come out on top.

"We looked at the course beforehand, we definitely knew it was going to be faster than last year because it was flat and there was no wind today. We were aiming for high 50km p/hr all ride," said Cooper.

BudgetForklift’s ride moved Tim Roe into fourth place overall. "We're quite happy with that ride. I think we just lacked the strength compared to Avanti today," said Roe.

"We lost one of our really strong guys in a crash before the Tour began. We would have benefited from having Sam Horgan today but we gave it our best and we've got to be happy with it."

The Tour continues this afternoon with a 104 kilometre road race from Clifton to Toowoomba criterium circuit.

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