Mads Pedersen and teammate Alex Frame finish within one second of the fastest time
It was an excellent start to the Herald Sun Tour for Trek-Segafredo with two riders finishing in the top positions in the short prologue Wednesday: Mads Pedersen finished .065 of a second from claiming the win and Alex Frame at 0.87 for fourth place.
There was no place for error in the brief 1.6-kilometer time trial, a course that suited powerful, fast riders and saw track specialists like Alex Frame come out on top. It was Ed Clancy (JLT Condor), a three-time Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion on the track, who took the victory, his first on the road, and with it donned the first yellow jersey of the tour.
Mads Pedersen sprints for home.
Mads Pedersen came the closest to knocking Clancy from the hot seat, so close he could only think of where that point six of a second could have been gained:
"Yeah it's always nice to finish on the podium, but I am losing with almost nothing today. It's braking a little later, pushing a little more power out of a corner or something. Second is always a pity, even more, when it's this close.
"For sure I am happy with my second place, but I would also like to win, to bring a victory home with us from Australia, and I think today was the biggest chance to do that. But in the end, I got beaten by a faster guy, and that's it."
New Zealander Alex Frame had the pressure of being Trek-Segafredo’s final starter and second-to-last of all the riders, and came through with flying colors, finishing within fractions of a second to Pedersen’s time and eighty-six hundredths to first place – and yet it was only good enough for fourth.
Frame, who knows Clancy from the track, Tweeted this after the race:
"Cheeky 4th place for me in the prologue. Close but not fast enough. Ed Clancy, the master of the human dive bomb, deserved the win. Enjoy hacking on the front Team JLT Condor tomorrow. Pretty 'keen' peloton here I reckon."
Alex Frame crosses the finish.
With one-second separating the top four positions in the general classification, and two Trek-Segafredo teammates sitting in second and fourth, the battle for the yellow jersey could be a fiercely fought affair in the first road stage Thursday, which Mads Pedersen alluded to:
"Now there's almost no time difference between us, so we have a proper chance to get the yellow jersey. We will for sure make a good race tomorrow and see what happens. Hopefully, we can do something good in the next days; we'll keep on fighting. We need to keep up with the guys from Europe and Argentina!"
