Albury based athletes, Liam McAlister and Bec Thomson both competed in the two day Wangaratta tour last weekend.  Bec finished the tour with a personal best time in the time trial and also rode aggressively in the road race.  Liam played his cards on Day 2, moving up from 12th in GC to winning the overall tour.  Here is how the weekend unfolded for him. 

Wangaratta Junior tour – by Liam McAlister
Last weekend I raced the Wangaratta Junior Tour – a race over four stages across 2 days.

Day 1
Day one consisted of a 56km road race followed by a 10km time trial.  In the road race I got 3rd in both the intermediate bonus sprints and finished the race in the bunch sprint.  The bonuses meant I was 7th after Stage 1. 

Next up was the time trial and after finishing with a little too much still in the tank, I realised I didn’t do so well and moved down to 12th on GC by the end of the day, 1min 20 behind.
Entering the second day, I knew I needed to be aggressive to make back time and my goal was to try to still finish 3rd – less than a minute away.  My plan was to attack whenever I could.

Day 2
The third stage was a 30km road race with a steep 2km hill climb finish [up the steeper side of the State Road Champs hill] and I knew this would suit me.  After no luck trying to get away, I was getting ready for the bunch kick up the hill when another rider broke away 5km from the finish.  I was able to get across to him on my own at the bottom of the climb and going for the win unluckily was caught 400m from the top by the top 2 GC leaders.  I finished 3rd and moved up to 7th overall, now 2min 20 behind but only 25sec behind 3rd.

The last stage was a 4 lap 24km Kermesse and with only 30sec of bonunses available my tactic was to attack, attack, attack until the race opened up.  Luckily in my first attack, I got away and had a 30sec gap after the first lap.  Another rider got across to me on lap two and we increased the gap until we had a 2min gap starting the last lap.  We kept working together until the finish and crossed the line 2min 30 in front of the bunch. I was happy to let my breakaway mate win the stage so he could win the sprint category and with time bonuses I finished 30sec ahead on GC for my first ever Tour win. 

Thanks for reading.