AJ powers past a man of Steele

Australian Steele von Hoff was just minutes from winning the first stage of the 2010 Tour de Timor mountain bike Ride for Peace when his legs cramped up and he had to get off his bike and watch fellow Victorian Adrian Jackson, known to most as "AJ", speed past to victory.

"I cramped up and just had to get off the bike," Steele said after coming in fourth. "All I could do was push the bike for two Ks and then I hopped on and rode in."

Jackson was just too strong, and the other early finishers were full of praise for his strength and determination. Twenty-seven-year-old Tasmanian Rowena Fry was the first female to finish, in 12th place and 4:36:32. The 60-kilogram dynamo is on the same team as AJ.

The first Timor-Leste rider to finish was Jacinto de Costa, who finished 17th (4:40.33). De Costa trained for just three weeks before the race and is a member of the Digicel National Team.

Today's high-speed stage hugged the flat north coast with a tail wind on a tar road, including the standard car-sized potholes and savage roadside drop-offs. Thirty kilometres out, the riders hit the first of the day's two climbs over a coastal mountain range. This climb was also the Tour's first King of the Mountain (KOM). Around the 100-kilometre mark, the road headed inland and began a winding 550-metre climb to the town of Balibo and the day's finish.

Hundreds of locals and the President, José Ramos-Horta, cheered the cyclists across the finish line, within a few kilometres of the Indonesian border.

Jackson finished the stage in four hours 11 minutes and 45 seconds with Malaysia's number one rider Shahrin Amir coming in at 4:11:25, just one second in front of Scott Liston, who is also on Steele's team. AJ is the current and former mountain bike orienteering world champion, and was the 2010 winner of the Otway Odyssey. "The last climbs were a bit like the hills around Melbourne," he said.

Dan McConnell came in fifth (4:16:08) with last year's Tour winner Neil van der Ploeg (4:17:15) in sixth. Liston, Von Hoff, McConnell and Van Der Ploeg are all in the Felt Torq team.

"Well done to AJ. He had a good ride. I just couldn't shake him," said van der Ploeg.

Two riders broke away from the pack about an hour and a half into the race, just before the village of Liquica. Malaysia's number one, Shahrin Amir, led the breakaway. At this stage a 50-strong peloton was about 500 metres behind the small breakaway group.

Amir maintained his position into Atabae, with a two-kilometre lead on the peloton. Timorese rider Abilio Barretó was in this group and was performing strongly. Defending champion van der Ploeg, last year's winner, was back in the peloton.

Jackson won a sprint to the first King of the Mountain, which was about 30 minutes out from the finish. Last year's top mountain man Scott Liston was second in this first climb today, by a whisker.

Team Rapid Cycling - AJ, Rowena Fry and her partner Ben Mather - produced the first-placed male and first-placed female. "We got the break we wanted," said Mather. "We broke the other guys up so they couldn't work together. It was a great first day."

Race note: Balibo has a strong connection with Australia, being the location of the "Balibo 5" massacre where five journalists for Australian media were murdered while reporting on the Indonesian invasion of Timor-Leste in 1975. Sobering reminders of the atrocity are evident at "Australia house" where the journalists were encamped and where they sought protection by roughly painting the word "Australia", along with an impression of the Australian flag, on the wall outside. Traces of the words and flag are still evident and the house has been converted into a memorial.

Full Results

General classification after stage 1