Peta Mullens wins Santos Festival of Cycling stage 1

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Peta Mullens (Roxsolt LIV Sram) unleashed a powerful sprint from the lead group to take out the opening stage of four-days of racing at the Santos Festival of Cycling. 

A split in the peloton, that left pre-race favourite Grace Brown (Team BikeExchange) chasing, meant it was down to a bunch of about a dozen who were jostling for position as the line of the National Road Series race approached. A well-positioned Mullens, who has a long list of Australian titles across a range of cycling disciplines, shot out of the group to take a clear win in the 80.7 kilometre stage from Seppeltsfield to Tanunda.

Then came Ruby Roseman-Gannon (ARA Pro-Racing), with a second on the stage boding well for her overall chances at the event, which replaces the cancelled Santos Women’s Tour Down Under. 

"It was great," said Mullens straight after taking the win. "We’ve been wanting to get back to racing for a really long time. I feel like this was the last time that we had a really big bike race. We just wanted to come here and animate the race. I just wanted the girls to feel part of the bike race and winning was really just part of paying them back." 

Mullens hadn’t played up her chances in pre-race interviews but with the number of wins she has clocked up over diverse terrain it’s never too surprising to see the winner of Australian road, mountain bike and cyclocross national championships out the front and charging toward the line. 

How it unfolded

Starting out between the grape vines of Seppeltsfield with the blue sky of a typical sunny summer day in South Australia above, it was a serene start to the racing. Though, that’s not the way thing continued in the stage which included three ascents of Mengler Hill, approached from the east. 

No sooner had the flag dropped than riders went off the front. First it was Kirsty Deacon (Veris Racing) then there was an impressive break from individual rider, Alana Forster, who first joined Deacon and then rode on alone.

The competition to mop up whatever mountain and sprint points could be found behind the breaks continued in the peloton, but then with little more than 20 kilometres to go Team BikeExchange assembled at the front on their new Bianchi bikes and it wasn’t long before the gap to Forster evaporated and the peloton started to shrink. 

Then the final climb of Mengler Hill quickly split the race apart, with a small group forming out the front including many of the pre-race favourites, including Sarah Gigante (Team Garmin Australia), Roseman-Gannon and some other handy sprinters including Mullens. Lucy Kennedy (Team BikeExchange) was also in that lead group but noticeably absent was Brown.  

Stuck behind, Brown’s attempts to chase were to no avail, with plenty of incentive to keep pushing the pace out the front. The lead group were still over a minute clear when they wound up for the sprint and the podium ended up being full of domestic riders, with Nicola Frain (Sydney Uni Staminade) finishing behind Mullens and Roseman-Gannon. Brown came in with the chasing group 1:12 back.