Shaw thing on opening stage

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Canberra’s Stuart Shaw (Drapac) was a surprise leader of the Tour of the Murray River, after winning the bunch sprint over some favoured sprinters. Shaw triumph in a blistering sprint finish from the consistent Joel Pearson (Genesys Wealth Advisers), while speedy Malaysian Harrif Saleh finished in third place.

The opening 155km stage produced one of the biggest crashes witnessed in Australian road cycling, which fortunately left no riders with serious injury. More than 70 riders from the 131-man field tumbled to the bitumen only six kilometres after the start of the Echuca-Rochester stage.

Former Tour De France star Henk Vogels, back home from the United States as manager of the Virgin Blue-RBS Morgans line-up, had an up-front view of the carnage from his team vehicle and said it was the biggest pile-up he had seen in world cycling. “In terms of numbers, yes, but not with injuries,” Vogels said. “It was pretty mind-blowing, though.”

Ballarat’s Patrick Shaw, leader of the current Scody Cup series and a member of the Virgin Blue RBS Morgans team, was one of the fallen riders. Chief commissaire Peter Tomlinson, of NSW, was forced to neutralise the race for 25 minutes as team managers and crews scrambled to repair broken bikes and get their riders back into the event.

Shaw managed to miss most of the impact from the fall and rode a brilliant team race to triumph in front of a large crowd in Rochester, home of one of Australia’s original cycling greats, the late Sir Hubert Opperman.

The victory secured him tour leadership from Sydney’s Richard Lang, who accumulated 11 bonus seconds in intermediate sprints throughout the journey, with Pearson in third spot.

Shaw works about 30 hours a week as a part-time draftsman for a Canberra gas company and paid tribute to the Drapac philosophy of ensuring that all team members must undertake some form of tertiary education or employment.

“It was an aggressive stage with no wind but I managed to get my old legs going at the finish,” Shaw said.

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