Genesys Wealth Advisers crush team time trial at Tour of Tasmania

Genesys Wealth Advisers has taken the opening stage at this year’s Tour of Tasmania with a dominant display in the 18.1km mountain-top team time trial. The team was lead across the line at the summit of Mt. Wellington by Ben Dyball who will go into tomorrow’s stage in the race leader’s jersey. Budget Forklifts finished in second place, 1:44 down on the winning time with Jayco-Apollo-VIS taking third spot after holding the lead for much of the afternoon.

Felt NZ was the first team to cross the line, having passed the three teams that started before them and set the benchmark at 49:54. The New Zealand-based squad is being lead by Josh Atkins. The young Kiwi finished last year’s Tour of Tasmania in second overall before going on to win his home tour, the Tour of Southland. Atkins has recently returned from the UCI Road World Championships where he was NZ’s best-placed rider, coming in 37th, at the same time as race winner Alexey Lutsenko from Kazakhstan.

The time of Felt NZ didn't last long as it was soon blitzed by Jayco-Apollo-VIS with a time of 48:29. This year’s silver medallist at the national championships U23 road race, Eric Sheppard, led the four-man group across the line taking the provisional race lead. He was followed by Patrick Lane, Calvin Watson and next year’s Saxo Bank – Tinkoff Bank-recruit Jay McCarthy.

Despite being a full one-minute slower than the winning time set last year by Jayco – 2XU, the team from the Victorian Institute continued to hold the quickest time with Team Polygon Australia holding the third fastest time with a 50:43 while the top teams were yet to come in.

SASI and GPM-Wilson Racing managed to place inside the top-ten with a 50:51 and 51:17 respectively but with Drapac Professional Cycling, Budget Forklifts and Genesys Wealth Advisers still to come in, most teams were awaiting a reshuffle of the general classification.

Drapac couldn’t get close to the Jayco-VIS squad’s time but ended the day in a respectable 5th place with a 50:06 while Budget Forklifts went 12 seconds quicker than Jayco to take the top position.

Genesys were not far behind Mark O’Brien’s Budget Forklifts team and when the local squad crossed the line, they were a full 1:44 quicker than second spot. Former U23 national champion Ben Dyball put his climbing skills on show as he lead the team across the line with a 47:32 – nearly a full minute faster than last year’s winning time.

Genesys finished with five riders as Jai Crawford, Nathan Earle, Campbell Flakemore and Jonathan Lovelock closed-out the top five spots in the general classification leading into tomorrow’s opening 123.5km road stage from New Norfolk to Lake Pedder.

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