Tour Down Under: Caleb Ewan wins stage 2 in Stirling

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Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) conquered the rollling climb up to Stirling to win stage 2 at the Tour Down Under on Wednesday, coming past 2019 champion Daryl Impey and his Mitchelton-Scott lead-out to seize the stage victory and overall race lead.

Impey hung on for second and took a six-second time bonus toward his GC effort, while Cofidis' Nathan Haas was third. Overnight race leader Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep) was near the front when the sprint started but faded out of the top 10. He is equal on time with Ewan but the Australia took the ochre-coloured leader's thanks to better stage placings.

Just as he did when he won here in 2018, Ewan waited patiently, this time as his former Mitchelton-Scott team ratcheted up the pace on the final climb in hopes of dropping the pure speedsters and improving Impey's chances for victory. Ewan foiled those plans, however, with a perfectly timed jump on the familiar uphill sprint to take the win by several bike lengths.

Bennett also made it over the toughest part of the climb and had hoped to sprint, but the Irish champion said later that when he got out of the saddle to give it a go, his legs were simply empty.

The win for Ewan was redemption of sorts after the Lotto Soudal man was out of position in the stage 1 finale and finished a disappointing seventh.

"Yesterday things really didn't go to plan, and I think we spoke for about an hour in the room about what we could do, what we could do better," Ewan said in the finishing straight. 

"The boys did an absolutely perfect job today. They did everything I asked for. They brought me to the line in perfect position."

The finale was marred by a huge crash with 1.5km to go that took down Elia Viviani (Cofidis), Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) and Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo), among others. 

Porte appeared to be okay, but Viviani had large patches of road rash visible. The Italian was up and walking around after the finish, however, and also appeared to have avoided serious injury. Simon Yates hit his left knee hard and struggled to ride to the finish, with blood covering his wound. Mitchelton-Scott said any final decision about him continuing in the Tour Down Under would be made before Thursday's stage 3. However his injuries appeared too severe for him to continue.

How it unfolded

The 135.8km second stage started in Woodside and finished in Stirling, where the peloton faced fast uphill finish. 

The day started with several trips around a loop near Woodside that included the day's two KOMs, followed by a short jaunt to the Stirling loop, where four more circuits awaited. The stage passed through the Adelaide Hills that have recently been hit by bushfires.  

The activities started early, animated by CCC Team's Joey Rosskopf, who had been in the breakaway on stage 1 but just missed taking the mountain jersey to UniSA's Jarrad Drizners. With the first KOM just 15km into the stage, Rosskopf wasn't waiting around on stage 2, and he jumped away in the opening kilometres with UniSA's Sam Jenner as Astana's Laurens De Vreese and Israel Start-Up Nation's Omer Goldstein attempted to bridge

Rosskopf grabbed maximum points at the first KOM and established his lead in the mountains classification, then eased up to let De Vreese and Goldstein latch on. The breakaway was soon a quartet as the leaders drove their advantage up to nearly three minutes on the hilly circuits.

Rosskopf grabbed the second KOM win at 38.5km and the leaders settled in toward the Stirling circuits, where intermediate sprints with time bonuses were up for grabs at 74.9km and 96.2km.

The breakaway started the Stirling circuits with just 1:10 on the peloton, and Goldstein claimed the top prize at the first sprint. Things fell apart from there, however, as De Vreese attacked the group when the peloton got close, starting his own solo adventure.

The Astana rider claimed the final sprint of the day, while behind his breakaway companions had been swallowed up, allowing GC contenders Jay McCarthy (Bora-Hansgrohe) and George Bennett (Jumbo-Visma) to fight for the remaining time bonuses.

The peloton caught De Vreese with 25km remaining, and from there the drama died down as teams started to think about setting up their leaders for the finish. 

Team Ineos' plans for Rohan Dennis went slightly sideways when the time trial world champion had a mechanical inside 20km to go and needed wheel change, but Luke Rowe was there to shepherd Dennis safely back into the peloton.

With the GC contenders and the sprinters still in the bunch, the jockeying for position started in earnest inside 10km to go and a lot of uphill ground to cover. 

Mitchelton-Scott waited for the final climb to start and then sent the entire squad to the front to drive up the pace for Impey, and the gambit almost worked except for failing to dislodge Ewan. 

Results

General classification