Tour Down Under – 2008
The 2008 Pro Tour is about to begin and the city of Adelaide is in full party mode as the riders paraded through the streets in preparation for the Tour Down Under. The first ever Pro Tour race to be staged outside of Europe will have a starting field of 133 and the local news predicted that they’re expecting a crowd of 500,000 to line the streets for the opening day. Not bad when you consider that’s around half the entire population of Adelaide.
First things first, though. Tonight we saw the accompanying Tour Down Under Classic, a 50km hell for leather scramble through the streets of Glenelg around a 2km course. As expected it came down to a sprint finish and it seemed that every Australian in the field wanted to post a win on home soil. Graeme Brown (Rabobank) was sitting on the end of the orange train, Matthew Wilson (UniSA) was prominent, even Australian born Heinrich Haussler (Gerolsteiner) popped his nose in front in the final couple of laps.
In the end it was Andre Greipel (Team High Road) who took it out from last year’s winner Mark Renshaw (Credit Agricole) and Robbie McEwen (Silence Lotto) in 3rd just ahead of Allan Davis (UniSA).
