Robert-Jon McCarthy sprints to Herald Sun Tour stage win

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Robert-Jon McCarthy (Jayco U23 Australian Team) has upset the big sprinters on a hot 156km day from Mitchelton Winery to Nagambie, taking out a bunch sprint ahead of Rico Rogers (OCBC) and Felix English (Rapha Condor).

A crash just before the second intermediate sprint point brought down Steele von Hoff (Garmin Sharp) while fast man Matt Goss dropped his chain in the final 200m and was powerless to stop the young Irish-born McCarthy from claiming the biggest win of his career.

Having ridden in the shadow of Caleb Ewan as the emerging talent of Australian sprinting thus far, McCarthy demonstrated his potential in the elite ranks his his top end speed as he pipped Rogers to the post. McCarthy launched his sprint almost in line with the statue of Black Caviar, the unbeaten race horse, holding off his rivals.

"It was a bit of shock to be honest. When you look at the field here, there are some of the best in the world and I just came here to learn from those guys and I found myself in a good position so I just hit out and came across the line first. I couldn't believe it and I’m a bit speechless to be honest," McCarthy said after the stage.

"Maybe I was a bit lucky with positioning and I just gave it 100%, for me the hard part was getting to the line with those established sprint trains," McCarthy said.

"There was a big fight for his [Matt Goss] wheel so I wasn't getting involved in that. I was just trying to follow Jonathan Cantwell in the finish."

The day started in the picturesque vineyard of Mitchelton winery at the earlier time of 9:30am as the temperature pushed into the region of the high-30 degrees Celsius as Victoria is in the midst of another summer heatwave.

The day’s break was formed early which quickly built up a lead of three minutes with Chris Jory (KordaMentha), Hugh Carth (Rapha Condor JTL), Davide Frattini (UnitedHealthcare), Nathan Elliot (African Wildlife Safaris), John Anderson (Drapac), Sam Spokes (Jayco U23 Australia), Thomas Hamilton (Jayco U23 Australia), Elchin Asadov (Synergy Baku) and Kristian Juel (Budgetforklifts) who bridged across the gap to complete the break.

The break was steadily building its lead as the race made its way the first climb of the day at Highlands which was won by Juel ahead of Anderson and Spokes. With the next climb only a handful of kilometres away, it was Anderson claiming to points with Elliot who was followed over by Frattini.

With the break holding an advantage of 2:45 at the climb, the time gap slowly shrunk on the leaders made their way down into Trawool for the first intermediate sprint point. Anderson won the sprint which put him into the lead of the points classification as Spokes than Juel went over the line.

With Cannondale at the head of affairs the lead of the break dropped to one minute and with the second intermediate sprint point almost in sight a touch of wheels in the peloton brought down several Garmin and Cannondale riders, including Alberto Bettiol, which also ended the race for Pat Shaw (KordaMentha) who was taken from the race in an ambulance.

With the long flat roads into the finishing town of Nagambie, the sprint finish became academic and surprising the field was McCarthy, trumping the bigger names to open his Herald Sun Tour account.

Simon Clark kept his lead over Cam Wurf (Cannondale) and Jack Haig (Avanti) on a day where his teammates provided the perfect protection. "The objective is to keep yellow until tomorrow so we rode with that tactic, obviously with Jack Anderson being in the break we had to bring that back. Obviously we tried with Gossy in the sprint but unfortunately he dropped his chain with 200m to go," Clarke said.

"I hardly touched the pedals all day so the boys did a great job. Mitch [Docker] and Damien [Howson] had everything under control so no stress for me whatsoever."

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