Greipel wraps up Down Under win
Never did the man who came to the 2008 Tour Down Under with aspirations of winning a sprint or two believe it was possible to win the race overall. But on a picture-perfect Sunday in Adelaide, that's exactly what happened to Andre Greipel.
Throughout this week, the 25-year-old German from Rostock - who goes by the nicknames of “The Gorilla” or “Andre the Giant” for obvious reasons - has been in a league of his own. Last Sunday, he won the Down Under Classic, and although it wasn’t part of the Tour Down Under in the race for the overall, he put himself forward as a name to watch later in the week.
What then happened will be talked about for years to come. Hauling his 170-pound frame over Old Willunga Hill and going on to win the stage, then taking an unprecedented fourth stage victory in the South Australian capital Sunday, cemented Greipel's name into the record books.
"My sport director [Allan Peiper] told me before the race, 'You don't have to worry about your jersey, just do your own thing and try and win the sprint again," said Greipel. Asked if was a dream come true, he said: "I feel like I'm in heaven ... I can't find the words."
The man who finished second was the sentimental favorite - though as Allan Davis knows all too well, sentiment doesn’t win bike races. Seven seconds behind at the start of the day, the Queenslander came within five seconds of the lead after winning the first intermediate sprint, but Greipel won the next before convincingly beating Davis in the final dash on Rundle Road, ending the race with a 15 second winning margin.
"I crossed the line knowing I couldn't have done one more centimeter harder than I did," said Davis, who looked both physically and emotionally shattered.
"I couldn't have done anything more ... I said before the race I'll go down fighting, no matter what. I won the first sprint, put everything into it, put everything into the second sprint and was up there in second; I felt quite good in that sprint, good enough to roll him, so I was hoping everything was going well for that last sprint. I hit the front 200 meters to go with a chance to win, and Andre was too good again ... as soon I saw him go past, I knew that was it."
That first intermediate sprint had plenty of argy-bargy as Davis's UniSA teammate Karl Menzies almost collided with Greipel. The commissaires issued no ruling, but the German believed the move to be intentional.
"I wasn't worried after the first sprint. I was disappointed about the teammate of Allan Davis; I wanted to sprint and he saw me and moved his bike into me. I don't want to say any names but he knows what he did. It wasn't really fair, but in the end my teammates supported me and the best rider won," said Greipel, who also becomes the first leader of the 2008 ProTour.
"I'm really proud of [being the ProTour leader], and my team's very proud of me. Everyone trusted me and I'm happy to be in Australia for the first time and win the first ProTour race [of the year]," he said.
Third overall was Jose Rojas of Caisse d’Epargne, who ended the race 33 seconds behind Greipel and at 22 years of age, was also the race’s best young rider. Meanwhile, as if he hadn’t done enough already, Greipel cleaned up the sprint jersey, while Belgian classics specialist Philippe Gilbert took home the mountains classification.
Billed as a battle royale
The 16-lap, 88km circuit race was billed as a thriller, though it was always going to be tough ask for Davis to win. Early on, UniSA appeared to have some friends from Team CSC, which was sharing the pace-making up front, and when Davis won the first sprint ahead of Greg Henderson and Stuart O'Grady, the seven-second margin between the top two overall narrowed down to four.
Miffed at what happened, High Road sent their crew up front leading into the second intermediate sprint and it paid off, as Greipel edged out Davis to open his margin back out to five seconds. But just when everyone was thinking it was a race between two, 2005 winner Luis Sanchez, eighth overall at the start of the day and only 28 seconds behind, slipped into a five-man move five laps from the finish.
The quintet opened a maximum lead of 10 seconds, but High Road wasn’t slow to see the danger and brought them back two laps from home, as CSC, Crédit Agricole and Silence-Lotto also began marshalling their troops to the fore.
Into the final straight, Davis had the perfect lead-out from High Road’s Bernard Eisel, but right behind him was Greipel in third wheel, notching his fourth stage victory with the apparent ease he's shown all week.
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