Crash carnage has put the Australian Liv Jayco AlUla team on the back foot at the women’s Tour Down Under.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While they are at least one rider down heading into Sunday’s second stage, New Zealander Ally Wollaston and her FDJ United-Suez teammates will try to retain the race leader’s ochre jersey.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Italian Alessia Vigilia, who left FDJ at the end of last season, is also off to a great start at Uno-X Mobility thanks to her 100km solo break, which was caught only within 300m of the finish on Saturday at Willunga.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Liv AlUla Jayco came into the Santos Tour on the back of an outstanding campaign at the Australian road cycling championships in Perth.<\/p>\n
Ruby Roseman-Gannon won the criterium and first-year WorldTour rider Mackenzie Coupland capitalised on great team riding to clinch the women’s elite road race.<\/p>\n
It was in stark contrast to the Jayco AlUla men, who botched the finish to their elite road race.<\/p>\n
But Liv AlUla Jayco lost some crucial horsepower during the week when Amber Pate crashed in training. She did not start stage one because of her injuries.<\/p>\n
Then inside the last couple of kilometres on Saturday, a crash took out Roseman-Gannon and several teammates.<\/p>\n
Georgia Baker was left with a bloodied knee, but should start the second stage.<\/p>\n
“All the riders have been through their fair share of crashes in their careers, so when you walk away like this \u2026 it can be a lot worse,” team manager Jess Allen said.<\/p>\n
“It’s not what you want, but we also have two days ahead and two new opportunities to turn things around.”<\/p>\n
The Tour will continue on Sunday with the 130.7km stage from suburban Norwood to Paracombe in the Adelaide Hills.<\/p>\n
Wollaston probably will not retain the overall lead given the climbing involved on Sunday, but she is determined to make opponents work for it.<\/p>\n
“I will try and do it justice \u2014 it would be rude not to,” she said.<\/p>\n
“You have to respect a jersey like this in the WorldTour. We’ll do everything tomorrow as a team to keep this jersey in the team.”<\/p>\n
Despite being overtaken so close to the finish, Vigilia was also upbeat about her form and settling into her new team.<\/p>\n
“It’s really nice to feel that we work well. It’s hard to arrive here and adapt to the jet lag and heat,” she said.<\/p>\n
“So this is a good sign that we are prepared and we will show it again.”<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crash carnage has put the Australian Liv Jayco AlUla team on the back foot at the women’s Tour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[221219,64,63,1154,784,221218,221220,85,198973,24351],"class_list":{"0":"post-420016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-amber-pate","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-crash","12":"tag-cycling","13":"tag-liv-jayco-alula","14":"tag-ruby-roseman-gannon","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-tour-down-under","17":"tag-womens"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420016","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=420016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}