With the stage profile mostly ascending for the first 40km, the pace was rather relentless. We took part in it; of course, as it shows we’ve showed up in good form. Dom would string out the field with his huge turbo diesel engine, and then one of us would launch an attack to keep pressure on the yellow jersey. We kept on like this for a while, but everybody was on board with fresh legs from yesterday’s short stage. On the first long descent there was a nasty mid field crash that took our teammate, Josh Thornton out of the race. Josh landed straight on his head, going about 70kph. Not a scratch on his body, all impact to the helmet. He was rather shaken up, but started feeling a bit better in the evening.
The field settled down during the middle kilometers of the race, a good thing for me as I was having some stomach issues and puked profusely every time I drank a sip from the bidon. I went back for some coke to try to settle the stomach; I was the last rider in the field for about 40k’s just hanging on. Good times. I started to come around for the last quarter of the race, and moved up steadily leading up to the last KOM. I went on the attack with a Glen Bak,(Murphy and Gunn) and David McCann,(Irish Nat. Team) I was hopeful it would stick, as we hit them at a good time, but my personal attempts of going for a stage were shut down by the chasing Australians. Once caught, I attacked again with 1km to the KOM, I was able to get over the top first and keep the pace up. The descent was too open and not technical enough for me to stay off. I was caught soon enough. The rain made things a bit stressful descending with the whole field but we stayed up front to keep Dom out of trouble and set him up for another stage. The “Dominator” took over early with about a kilometer to go and took his third stage victory, to the disappointment of the rest of the field. Did I mention I was getting tired, one more stage.
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