NZ cyclist Ally Wollaston wins Cadel Evans race
New Zealand cyclist Ally Wollaston has capped a successful week by winning the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.
The FDJ Suez rider timed her sprint perfectly in Geelong at the end of Saturday’s 142.4km race for a convincing win.
She also took out the Surf Coast classic on Wednesday in the lead-up to the Cadel Evans race.
Saturday marks Wollaston’s first win at WorldTour level since she took out stage one of last year’s Tour Down Under in Adelaide.
Wollaston also won a silver and a bronze medal on the track last year at the Olympics.
She was in a select group of 14 riders that decided the Cadel Evans race, with Dutch rider Karlijn Swinkels (UAE) second and Swiss Noemi Ruegg (EF Education Oatly) third after winning the Tour Down Under earlier this month.
American star Chloe Dygert (Canyon Sram) was another pre-race favourite and she finished fourth.
Dutch rider Babette van der Wolf (EF Education Oatly) attacked inside the last 70km and Norway’s Stine Dale (Coop-Repsol) joined her.
After dropping back to the peloton, van der Wolf was caught in another crash just before the riders hit the first of two climbs up the steep Challambra Rd, a key feature of the race.
Dale stayed away over the top of Challambra and was caught inside the last 20km.
A series of crashes punctuated the second half of the race, with Australian Alyssa Polites (ARA national team) and Dutch rider Daniek Hengeveld (Ceratizit) among those to abandon.
They were prominent earlier this month in Adelaide at the Tour Down Under, with Polites winning the queen of the mountain category and Hengeveld a surprise winner of stage one.
Australian Neve Bradbury (Canyon Sram), one of the top riders in the field, was a late withdrawal on Saturday morning because of illness.
Compatriot Luke Plapp (Jayco AlUla) is also out of the men’s race on Sunday.
His team announced on Friday that Plapp’s domestic season has ended prematurely because of wrist surgery.
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