{"id":421048,"date":"2026-01-18T10:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T10:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/421048\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T10:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T10:52:07","slug":"ally-wollaston-claims-stage-two-of-tour-down-under-to-maintain-race-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/421048\/","title":{"rendered":"Ally Wollaston claims stage two of Tour Down Under to maintain race lead"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Zealand’s Ally Wollaston has unleashed a storming finish to win stage two of the Tour Down Under and keep the race lead.<\/p>\n

The FDJ United-Suez rider outsprinted defending Tour champion Noemi Ruegg (EF Education Oatly) to claim the 130.7 kilometre stage at Lobethal in the Adelaide Hills.<\/p>\n

Wollaston also won stage one, but unlike yesterday at Willunga, the hilly course today was not her favourite terrain.<\/p>\n

With 13km left, just before the start of the last of three finishing laps, Canada’s world road champion and Ruegg’s teammate Magdaleine Vallieres lit up the stage with an attack.<\/p>\n

Vallieres is the first reigning women’s world road champion to race at the Tour.<\/p>\n

Fellow race drawcard, American Chloe Dygert (Canyon Sram), soon was at the front of a group of five that went clear inside the last 10km.<\/p>\n

Dygert’s most recent win was the final stage of last year’s Tour Down Under.<\/p>\n

She said in the pre-race media conference on Friday that she was “sick of losing”, and Olympic champion Grace Brown said in the TV commentary that Dygert had “finish-line fever”.<\/p>\n

They were caught inside the last kilometre, setting up the bunch finish.<\/p>\n

Crashes thwart Australian team at TDU<\/a><\/p>\n

The Australian Liv AlUla Jayco team is out to rescue its women’s Tour Down Under campaign after a painful start in Saturday’s opening stage.<\/p>\n

Wollaston said after her stage win yesterday that she would do the leader’s jersey justice, and the New Zealander was good for her word.<\/p>\n

The Australian team Liv AlUla Jayco suffered another blow when Georgia Baker was ruled out before the start.<\/p>\n

She suffered a bloodied knee in the crash that ruined their stage win chances yesterday. The team started the Tour one rider down after Amber Pate crashed in training.<\/p>\n

Today’s stage started at suburban Magill and within the first 10km went up Norton Summit Road, one of Adelaide’s most popular cycling spots.<\/p>\n

The climb in above 30 degrees Celsius quickly exposed any riders in the peloton who were struggling.<\/p>\n

While the hard start did not detonate the front of the race, it had several riders out the back.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

Australian star Brodie Chapman (UAE Team ADQ) and three compatriots on the ARA National Team \u2014 Amelie Sanders, Hannah Gianatti and Anna Dubiar \u2014 were among those who abandoned.<\/p>\n

Italian Soraya Paladin, another rider who crashed yesterday, also pulled out as the race reached three laps of the 12.3km Paracombe finishing circuit \u2014 another Adelaide Hills cycling landmark.<\/p>\n

With a rider up the road, Wollaston won the bunch sprint at the two intermediate sprints, boosting her overall lead on the road from four seconds to eight.<\/p>\n

Finland’s Wilma Aintila (Canyon Sram) went clear by herself inside the last 100km, but she was caught after the second sprint with about 51km left.<\/p>\n

There were repeated attacks from the peloton as riders tried to spark the crucial move that would snare the stage win and potentially the overall lead.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand’s Ally Wollaston has unleashed a storming finish to win stage two of the Tour Down Under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[220796,64,63,784,221665,1124,85,221666,198973,23293],"class_list":["post-421048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ally-wollaston","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-noemi-ruegg","tag-south-australia","tag-sports","tag-stage-two","tag-tour-down-under","tag-womens-cycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421048","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=421048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}