Harry Sweeny came into the Santos Tour Down Under with no expectations, saying before the race that he hadn’t changed his preparation as his main objectives lay later in the spring. He stated, in a team release, that he would “still be racing TDU with everything I’ve got, but this will be a few percent less than my peak.”
Despite that, the EF Education-Easypost rider was at the sharp end of the action on the difficult stage 2, which featured the double ascent of the Corkscrew climb.
“To be honest, actually, the whole summer and also so far, I’ve been going way better than I thought. I thought my power meter was broken for the last few weeks, actually,” Sweeny, with a laugh, told Seven commentators after the stage finished in Uraidla, “but I’ve been feeling good. I’ve been happy, which is really important.”
“I came into this race with no expectations at all and then I got a call from JV, the boss, and he was just like, ‘why aren’t you going to ride GC here?’ And I thought, actually, it’s a good point. Maybe I will give it a crack, and that’s about it.”
Though neither of them could follow the massive counter-attack by the UAE duo of Jay Vine and Jhonatan Narváez, Sweeny managed to coalesce a chase group that would battle it out for third place, as Leonard stayed in the second chase group.
“When we just got over the top, everyone was pretty on the limit, and it wasn’t really very cohesive at all. But then, as soon as I attacked after, and we got a group of, I don’t know, five or 10 it was much easier to work and people were actually willing to because I think they realised that it was a race. But I mean, it’s hard when there are two UAE up the road, they just work so well together, and hats off to them,” Sweeny added.
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