'Ready for anything' - Welsford and Fidanza win replacement races in Australia

The Surf Coast Classic, a UCI 1.1 race, was cancelled due to extreme heat and the risk of bushfires in the region, but the Cadel’s Criterium events were swiftly arranged to give teams a work-out ahead of this weekend’s Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.

“Safety remains our priority, but we are also eager to deliver elite racing for fans, teams and broadcast audiences where appropriate, race director Scott Sunderland said of the Cadel’s Criterium races, which took place on a 2km circuit in Geelong.

The 40km women’s race came down to a bunch sprint in Geelong’s Eastern Gardens, with Martina Fidanza (Visma | Lease a Bike) claiming the spoils ahead of the SD Worx-ProTime duo of Marta Lach and Barbara Guarischi. 

“The sprint was actually perfect,” Fidanza told SBS. “I found my teammates in the last 500m because in this crit it was so easy to lose the team but then we found each other.” 

In the men’s event, Welsford was part of an eight-man move that went clear midway through the 50km race, and his Ineos teammates helped to disrupt the chase behind. Despite the presence of strongmen Laurence Pithie (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Matteo Sobrero (Lidl-Trek) in the break, Welsford always looked a likely winner.

The Australian duly claimed the sprint ahead of Jensen Plowright (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and Sobrero. Welsford joined Ineos from Red Bull this winter, and he has enjoyed a fine start with his new team, winning the Australian Criterium Championships and a stage of the Tour Down Under.

“Hats off to our breakaway, we worked really well together and everyone fully committed to the finish. It was a hard one out there, for sure,” Welsford told SBS.

“On this course, you have to be ready for anything. It was getting really tough, you could see everyone starting to get really tired down there in the crosswind, and I knew it was going to snap eventually.”

The Cadel’s Criterium served as a preamble to this weekend’s Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, with the women’s race on Saturday followed by the men’s race on Sunday. Earlier this week, the organisers indicated that the WorldTour events would go ahead as planned despite the cancellation of the Surf Coast Classic, saying they were “proceeding with no identified impacts at this time.”