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CSC's Stuart O'Grady wins stage 2 and takes the overall lead at Australia's Sun Tour

Toyota-United's Ben Day sits in fourth overall

Published: Oct. 14, 2008

Stuart O'Grady continued the CSC-Saxo Bank domination of the Jayco Herald Sun Tour, winning the second stage, after his 21-year-old teammate, Matt Goss, of Tasmania, won the prologue and stage 1.

The American teams Toyota-United, Team Type 1 and Jelly Belly are participating in the week-long race. The best placed rider from an American team is Toyota-United's Australian Ben Day, who is in fourth, 20 seconds behind race leader O'Grady.

After having spent 60 kilometers off the front of the race on stage 1, O'Grady's ability to bounce back and go on the attack, yet again, has stamped his authority on the race as he also moved into the overall race leader’s yellow jersey.

The victory marked O’Grady’s first win in Australia’s oldest stage race since 1997, a year in which he collected the champagne of three occasions. Today’s victory marking the fourth win in his three sojourns around Victoria.

“My last win was Paris-Roubaix. I only win the big ones,” O’Grady said with a smile after the stage.

“It’s been a long time. Pretty much every other race, like Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders, I ride for a teammate. Even in the last couple of days I’ve been working for the little wiper snapper in Gossy (Matt Goss) but it’s nice to be out there and going hard and to win.”

The 118km stage from the picturesque beach-side town of Inverloch to Warragul made it three wins in three days for the CSC Saxo Bank team, following the back-to-back victories of Goss.

An aggressive start to the race was lead by countless attacks from Jack Bobridge of the South-Australia.com-AIS team.

The 19-year-old Beijing Olympian was in almost every break for the first 80km of the stage but with limited wind to break-up the peloton none of the moves survived.

Inside the final 25km a serious break of 14 riders formed at the front led by O’Grady with his CSC Saxo Bank teammate Lars Bak, Ben Day (Toyota-United), Portuguese climber Hugo Sabido (Barloworld) and Richie Porte (Praties).

The group got out to a 40 seconds when, despite having Patrick Shaw in the break, the Virgin Blue Australian national team led the chase as their team leader Will Walker had missed the vital move.

As the peloton was closing in, O’Grady attacked again with only Will Routley (Bicycle Superstore Canada) able to respond.

O’Grady dropped Routley with less than a kilometer to go to finish six seconds clear to collect his fourth career stage win in the race.

Routley was caught right on the line, by the remnants of the breakaway group with Japanese rider Kazuhiro Mori (Aisan) taking second with the Canadian having to settle for third.

“I called upon all my experience today to go for the win and it paid off,” O’Grady said.

“We thought we’d take the tactics a little bit differently. There was a lot of tactics. It was a constant chess game. A few times we got in trouble but then we’d go on the offense and in the end everything worked out perfect.”

The main peloton was led home by Dale Scarfe (Panasonic) 36 seconds down on the South Australian who is now among the favorites for overall honors.

“I’ve gone pretty deep the last couple of days. I think we’ll just take it day by day from now,” O’Grady said of his chances to hold onto the yellow jersey.

Importantly for the five-time Olympian he has put time into other pre-race favourites including defending champion Matt Wilson (Team Type-1), his teammate Glen Chadwick, Will Walker and 2002 winner Baden Cooken (Barloworld).

The Make it Happen in Provincial Victoria U23 category leader’s jersey changed hands as Simon Clarke (South-Australia.com-AIS) was in the breakaway group and finished eighth on the stage. Clarke won the U23 category in 2007.

The Cyclismo Bendigo King of the Mountains jersey moved across to Hugo Sabido, who is also in contention for overall honors as he currently sits in sixth place overall just 20 seconds down.

O’Grady will start stage three with a 14 second buffer over Mori and also leads the Budget Forklift sprint points classification.

Jack Bobridge was awarded the Volvo most aggressive rider on the stage.