A decisive early break and a powerful sprint by young Australian Karl Menzies (UniSA) left the favourites out of the reckoning in the Tour Down Under.
Menzies was part of the 18-rider break that formed after just 16km of the first stage through the Barossa Valley vineyards and he survived all the attacks and then out sprinted Switzerland?s Martin Elminger (Ag2r) to win the stage and pull on the orange leader?s jersey.
"This is as big as it gets for me, this is the best result by a long way," Menzies said.
"We thought it might go down early, so we all had to be up there. The group went and that was it for the day and then the attacking started with 30km to go and five of us left in the end, we all worked all the way to the line. Now I've gotta make it up that Willunga Hill (Saturday's stage) so a bit of pressure but I'll have a think about that later. I was just happy to win a stage and I could probably go home now if I wanted to, but I'll try and get to the end and we'll just wait to see what happens.?
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