Southland’s Tom Scully Take 4th Place In Tour Of Slovenia
Bauer & Scully take TT 4th-5th as Roglic wins Tour of Slovenia
New Zealanders Jack Bauer and Tom Scully have finished fourth and fifth respectively in the final stage of the 2018 Tour of Slovenia. The stage was won by Primoz Roglic of LottoNL-Jumbo who took back-to-back stage wins and with them the overall title.
echo adrotate_group(4, array("fallback" => 0, "weight" => 0, "site" => "no")); New Zealanders Jack Bauer and Tom Scully have finished fourth and fifth respectively in the final stage of the 2018 Tour of Slovenia. The stage was won by Primoz Roglic of LottoNL-Jumbo who took back-to-back stage wins and with them the overall title.
After winning stage 4 of the Tour of Slovenia with a brilliant solo breakaway performance, Primoz Roglic arrived at the start line for the final stage’s individual time trial with a 33 second lead over EF Education First-Drapac’s Rigoberto Uran. Strengthening Roglic’s GC hopes on the final day was the fact that the individual time trial was very much his strong suit; and it proved confidence worth having as the Slovenian rose to the occasion in front of his home crowd.
Over the 21.5km course from Trebnje to Novo Mesto, Roglic was head and shoulders above his nearest rival; Jan Tratnik of CCC Sprandi Polkowice; finishing the stage in 24.46mins, an average speed of just over 52kph and 27 seconds ahead of Tratnik. Josef Černy of Eikov-Author Cycling Team placed third at 36 seconds, and was the first of five riders to finish within 11 seconds of one another.
Jack Bauer of Mitchelton-Scott was part of a team that played a very diverse role in this year’s race. Luka Mezgec and Caleb Ewan had both put their hands up in sprint finishes in the opening two stages, before Daryl Impey moved up to second place overall with a strong display of climbing behind Tom Scully’s Colombian leader Rigoberto Uran.
In the final stage though it was Bauer’s time to shine and he did just that. Bauer’s time of 25.24mins was good enough for fourth place just behind Černy and 6 seconds ahead of compatriot Tom Scully.
Afterwards Bauer appeared disappointed not to have finished higher on the final day, but he paid due credit to a dominant Roglic.
“We rode the course this morning and really liked what we saw,” he said post-race. “I think we were both hoping for more once we were out there, personally I fell apart over a really grippy final three kilometres, but hats off to Roglic for delivering in front of a home crowd.”
Story By Ed Wright – June 18, 2018. Republished courtesy of roadcycling.co.nz