Brodie Chapman and Luke Plapp swept up the overall victories at the Tour of Bright on Sunday but shared around the spoils with Katelyn Nicholson (Butterfield Ziptrak) and Levi Hone (Team Brennan) winning the final stage, which ended at the top of Mt Buffalo.
Chapman took the overall women’s lead after a dominant performance in the stage 2 time trial but the UAE Team ADQ rider had been clear at the start of the day that she wasn’t going to be able to rest on her laurels after walking away from the race against the clock with a 44 second buffer on the GC to second-placed Talia Appleton (Praties).
There was an early break in the sunny 60km closing stage of Isla Carr, Melbourne to Warrnambool winner Katelyn Nicholson and Lucie Spurling with the trio pulling out a gap of around three minutes before the final climb which delivers around 1000m of vertical ascent.
“I just went pretty hard from the bottom of climb, same as Tawonga yesterday because I knew we had to crack on to try and catch Katelyn who was quite a way up the road,” Appleton told Cyclingnews. “She had quite a head start on us.”
A group formed, with Appleton riding the front and Chapman sticking to the ‘hold the wheel’ plan, fighting to stick to it at times but relying on the flatter sections to keep in touch.
The rest of the lead trio fell away but Nicholson managed to hold firm, just, as Appleton crossed the line only two seconds back with Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto Generation rider Emily Dixon in third, on both the stage and overall.
Then next it was Chapman, who comfortably secured the Tour of Bright win with her fourth place on the stage, after only giving away two seconds of her lead to Appleton.
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