Today was the hilly stage. 130km with a decent climb in the middle and rolling hills. We weren’t looking forward to this…
The peloton kept things together with the exception of a few small breakaway attempts.
Once the climb started, things began to heat up. There were splits all over the place and a bunch of 5 of us got a good gap over the top. We rolled turns and put some good time into the bunch. Shortly after Kyosuke Takei launched his attack from 20km out. He was a minute off the yellow jersey of Pierre Alan Scherwey who was also in the break. As this was the case we pretty much left it up to Pierre to do the chasing. In the end is was Takei who took it out, putting around 50 seconds into us. He was now only seconds of yellow. I rolled through for a 3rd place.
We had lunch there in the bush. Today was a good day.
Photos: Craig Sheppard
