Coupland was also struggling at the finish, but she held on to win by 32 seconds.<\/p>\n
This is her first year as a WorldTour rider and she will compete this season wearing the national champion\u2019s jersey.<\/p>\n
Teammate Ruby Roseman-Gannon, who won the criterium title on Friday night, beat Neve Bradbury (Canyon SRAM) for second.<\/p>\n
Katelyn Nicholson (Butterfields Ziptrack), who was in the break with Talbot and Ruby Taylor (Team Redcat), finished off her strong ride with fourth place.<\/p>\n
In the men\u2019s event, Pat Eddy has caused a massive boilover, defying the might of Jayco AlUla to win the Australian men\u2019s elite road championship.<\/p>\n
Eddy held off Jayco AlUla star Luke Plapp at the finish to take out the 177km road race on Sunday in Perth.<\/p>\n
Jayco AlUla will be kicking themselves, given they had defending champion Luke Durbridge off the front by himself for most of the last three laps in the 13-circuit race.<\/p>\n
Eddy and fellow Team Brennan rider Oliver Bleddyn, a gold medallist in the team pursuit at the Paris Olympics, then duelled with Plapp and Jayco AlUla teammate Ben O\u2019Connor on the last lap.<\/p>\n
Durbridge faded and was caught near the finish, leaving Eddy and Plapp to decide the championship.<\/p>\n
In the men\u2019s race, Durbridge attacked the front group at the start of the third-last lap and had a lead of more than 40 seconds inside the last 30km.<\/p>\n
As the temperature reached 35 degrees on Sunday afternoon, the men stayed together for the first few laps of their race.<\/p>\n
Durbridge was prominent when the front group of 14 went clear after 40km and quickly built a lead of more than four minutes.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor was also in the attack, along with Chris Harper (Pinarello Q36.5) and Sam Welsford (Ineos Grenadiers).<\/p>\n
As the top sprinter in the front group, Welsford was the main danger to other teams\u2019 plans, but he was dropped well before the finish.<\/p>\n
The front group and the peloton splintered in the heat as riders not in the break, especially time trial champion Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates), ramped up the pace.<\/p>\n
Plapp, who surprisingly only managed eighth in the time trial, was also in the peloton and worked his way to the front of the race.<\/p>\n
Vine dropped out of contention inside the last three laps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coupland was also struggling at the finish, but she held on to win by 32 seconds. This is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-407590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}