It appears to be a case of expect the unexpected at the Jayco Herald Sun Tour. Friday in Wangaratta, a town a stone's throw away from Glenrowan, home of great Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, early race leader Matt Wilson and his Unibet.com team piled on the pressure on a short transitional stage through the north-eastern Victorian countryside. By the day's end and with two stages remaining, the 30-year-old found himself back at the top of the leader-board.

The finale was equally exciting, with a breakaway group of three fighting out the finish. Two DFL-Cyclingnews riders, Cameron Jennings and Jeremy Vennell, were up against a strongman from FRF Couriers-NSWIS in Peter Herzig, but the sprightly Jennings made no mistake coming into the final corner just 130 meters from the line, diving in first and coming up a winner. Herzig ended up second, with Vennell third, eight seconds back.

"It's my first professional win, this is right up there," said Jennings. "The only other win I've had is a small kermesse somewhere in Belgium; a lot of hard work has gone into this, so I'm really happy."

Despite having two teammates in the winning move, the lad from Rockhampton, a bustling city in far north Queensland, said the sole tactic was making sure teammate Bernard Sulzberger regained the mountains jersey, which he did on the only categorized climb of the day. "That was priority number one: we had to hit it out pretty hard over the climb to keep the Astana guys at bay, and then we sort of sat back till the second sprint. A few groups were away and I happened to follow a wheel and got away. I pushed the pace a few times and we all just pulled good turns all the way to the finish."

Overnight leader Joost Van Leijen from the Netherlands National Team led the peloton home for 14th place, 1:41 later. He thought he'd kept his slender margin over Wilson, who'd picked up two intermediate sprints en route to Wangaratta, closing the gap from eight to two seconds.

Jennings triumphs over Herzig to win the fifth stage.

Photo: Anthony Tan

However, when he arrived at the podium ceremony, the Dutchman discovered chief commissaire Wayne Pomario had docked him 20 seconds for being paced back to the peloton after a puncture, which happened at a crucial stage of the race. Forced to ride back to his team car sans yellow, Van Leijen was beside himself and refused to speak with the media. The judges' decision cost him not only the race lead, but he now sits third overall behind Astana's Steve Morabito, the pair respectively 18 and 14 seconds behind Wilson.

"We've been consistent this week - it's not the first rider it's been applied to," said UCI commissaire Pomario, who's been accused by a number of riders in this year's race of unnecessarily harsh rule enforcement. "Normally, what a team car should do is drop in behind the rider and follow the rider up if he wants to, to ensure he gets back safely - that's how I've normally seen team managers do it. But when a rider sits on your fender, that's pacing."

According to Pomario, Van Leijen asked why he didn't receive a warning before: "The fact of the matter is when I saw him doing it, it was a done deal, so there was no way to give him a warning," he said. "Secondly, the regulations clearly state you're not allowed to do it - take (the rulebook) as a warning. When a policeman gives you a ticket for speeding, it's sort of like saying, 'don't give me a ticket, you should have warned me first'. And unfortunately that was the situation that he was in."

Wilson was looking more than a touch uncomfortable with the situation.

"Obviously it would have been better to have won those seconds than to have someone penalized,” he said. “Ordinarily in Europe, you wouldn't see that sort of treatment, but it's really... I'm lost for words about it. Really, I don't know what to say."

Whether Van Leijen's team manager Frank Kwanten would have done the same if Wilson had not been so close on the overall standings is up for speculation, but there's no doubt the Dutch team was placed under extraordinary pressure, and may have reacted poorly as a consequence.

"Normally, I wouldn't be terribly confident going into a time trial but the form's really good," Wilson said on his chances for overall victory. "It's only eight kilometers, so we'll see what I can do. I would do my maximum effort even if I was five minutes down, so the game plan doesn't change at all tomorrow - I'll give it everything. As far as the criterium on Sunday, that might change a bit."

Fortune favors the brave
Starting in Mount Beauty, at the base of Thursday's final ascent to Falls Creek, there was an aura of expectation surrounding this lumpy leg to Wangaratta. What would happen? Would Unibet try and claw back time, like they did on Stage 2 - or would the Dutch try to assert themselves in order to strengthen Van Leijen's lead?

The day's only climb, a fairly insignificant 4.7km-long drag, was notable only for the result of the king of the mountains sprint, Bernard Sulzberger (DFL-Cyclingnews) getting the better of Stage 4 winner Steve Morabito (Astana). And with that being the final categorized climb of the tour, Sulzberger, provided he finishes, will be the classification winner come Sunday.

Briefly splitting over the top, a group of eight pushed forward, but enjoyed only a brief escape out front before the situation returned to status quo after 57km. But the sprint in Myrtleford became the protagonist for a fiery finale. Wilson won the prime and earned a valuable three second bonus, closing the margin to Van Leijen to five seconds. Shortly thereafter, a series of combined Jayco-Unibet.com offensives were launched in an attempt to unseat the yellow jersey, but the Dutchman and his team were on the ball, bringing the race back together.

Unibet's trio of sprinters, Cooke, Casper and Hunt, sacrificed themselves to provide Wilson with another perfect lead-out and another three second time bonus, bringing himself to within two seconds of the lead - it was game on, Unibet.com. Now just 23km from the finish, a third Unibet-driven lead-out was certainly on the cards, but what seemed like an incessant series of attacks and counters followed, eventually leaving Jennings, Vennell and Herzig fighting for stage honors.

Recalled Jennings: "Jeremy was on the front about a kilometer out and I know Peter Herzig from racing in Brisbane; I know he's a good, strong rider but hasn't got much of a kick on him. So he sort of made his move and didn't make too much of an impression, and I was able to get on his wheel pretty quickly; he looked around and saw Jeremy was still making ground up on us again, so he had to keep going. I just got the inside line on the last corner and had to kick through."

Results
1. Cameron Jennings (Aus), DFL Cyclingnews Litespeed 2:30:40
2. Peter Herzig (Aus), FRF Couriers-NSWIS same time
3. Jeremy Vennell (NZ), DFL Cyclingnews Litespeed, at 0:08
4. Yukiya Arashiro (Jpn), Nippo-Meitan Latrobe, at 0:26
5. Ben Jacques-Maynes (USA), Bissell-Priority Health, at 0:35
6. Patrick Shaw (Aus), Jayco Australian National, at 0:35
7. Gene Bates (Aus), South Australia-AIS, at 0:35
8. Jimmy Casper (F), Unibet , at 0:35
9. Christian Leben (G), Wiesenhof-Felt, at 0:39
10. Aaron Kemps (Aus), Astana, at 0:39Overall
1. Matthew Wilson (Aus), Unibet 16:08:14
2. Steve Morabito (Swi), Astana, at 0:14
3. Joost Van Leijen (Nl), Dutch National, at 0:18
4. Trent Lowe (Aus), Jayco Australian National, at 0:24
5. Julien Mazet (F), Astana, at 0:29
6. Baden Cooke (Aus), Unibet, at 1:51
7. Simon Clarke (Aus), South Australia-AIS, at 2:02
8. Dominique Perras (Can), Bicycle Superstore, at 3:53
9. Cameron Wurf (Aus), Bissell-Priority Health, at 4:05
10. Eric Wohlberg (Can), Bicycle Superstore, at 4:25