Marauding Meyer makes race lead his own

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A world champion on the track and the reigning Australian national time trial champion, Cameron Meyer today demonstrated why he owns these titles with a calculated, powerful and ultimately fruitful ride to take both the stage from Norwood to Strathalbyn and a stranglehold on the 2011 Santos Tour Down Under with just two days remaining.

Despite a crash just two days ago in Mannum, Meyer attacked with four other riders with about 80km remaining to form a powerful quintet that stayed away - save for Rob Rujigh - for the rest of the stage. It was a mammoth effort and an oversight of sorts by the sprinters' teams, which let the move remain ahead for that long.

With two men in the day's main move and another card up its sleeve, Garmin-Cervelo pulled the strings of the Tour Down Under peloton to perfection, managing to foil the plans of Omega Pharma-Lotto, HTC-Highroad and Team Sky, which all wanted to get their man to the line for the win, much like the corresponding stage during last year's edition.

Instead it came down to a small sprint between Meyer, Thomas De Gendt (Vacansoleil-DCM) and Laurens ten Dam (Rabobank) - and they finished in that order, with Meyer's teammate Matthew Wilson finishing in fourth.

"It's always hard to stay away, especially this race, [which is] renowned for the sprints," said Meyer after the finish. "We worked really well together; it's a credit to the break, it's a credit to my team-mate Matt Wilson.

"To get the stage win is the first thing I thought about - yesterday I missed the split by seven seconds and lost a little bit on GC. So I thought it's going to be hard to make that back, but to get the stage win and throw my hands in the air at the finish line, it's just a great feeling."

Meyer goes into tomorrow's penultimate stage - a 131km journey from McLaren Vale to Willunga with two ascents of Old Willunga Hill - as the man to beat with the South Australian heat kicking into overdrive.

"It's going to be good - good fun," Wilson said of the challenge in store tomorrow. "We have a really strong team for tomorrow's stage; typically it still comes together with about 40-50 guys, we'll see what happens.

"It's a little bit of a shock I guess to pull off a stage in the tour - it's obviously renowned for the sprinters and they've had control of the race so far.

"The bunch rides pretty predictably, they hold their grip to a certain time and then they go 'smack' at the end, so there's no real point banging your head against the wall when you first get out there, it's all about holding the gap nicely and stepping on it before they know what's happened," he continued.

"We were talking the whole time and we said as soon as we get the next time check, we go. It came through at about a minute and a half, we laid it down and when I saw 20km to go, I thought 'it's doable'."

And it was very 'doable'; despite losing one of the leading quintet late in the stage, the combined force of some pedigree riders managed to upstage the fast men, the first of which to finish was Matthew Goss, the erstwhile overall leader. While the finish may have suited riders like Goss on paper, Mayer said it was to his preference, as he demonstrated.

"That really suits me, to have a hard stage finish; just the wind out there was always going to be difficult for the peloton to swap off and it was going to be a bit chaotic," he explained.

"But it's good for me, I like to get out there time trialling in my own rhythm and... it was a really hard finish, after you have to swap off and then sprint, it really suited me.

"We definitely talked among ourselves the whole time, we kept checks on the breakaway times and how far we were ahead, so in the end... we really had to play it cool, really wait. The peloton can bring it back whenever they want so we waited until about 20-30km to go and then we really hit the gas."

It didn't however, and Meyer had his second win of 2011 - which, like his time trial national title, netted him a special jersey - the ochre leader's jersey.

A quality move

The attacks flew thick and fast after the 11km neutral section but it wasn't until the peloton had seen off the day's first intermediate sprint that 'the move' finally made it clear. While it didn't seem like the bunch would give it much leash, the four - soon to become five with the addition of Wilson - had accumulated a lead in excess of two minutes.

"When we went, we went strong," said Meyer. "I don't think we would have stayed away without Matt there, he really saved my legs a little bit.

"He drove it in the last kilometre to make sure we did stay away, gave me the free run at the sprint and in the end I had the legs on the day to just come over the Vacansoleil guy and win the race."

And despite the combined forces of the aforementioned sprinters' teams, the leaders held out for over 80km, Meyer explaining that, "In the last 20km, I knew if I had about a minute and a half I'd have a bit of a sniff coming home with the downhill run into the town and maybe if the tailwind came, I'd be able to hold it - and that's what I did today.

"I went out there to give it a go and our plan today was to put a couple in the break. We had the strength to hold it off. It's a shock to have the jersey, but I'm thrilled."

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