Calvin Watson won the 60th edition of the Jayco Herald Sun Tour today in Victoria, Australia.
The final stage was 93kms long from Moonah Links to Arthurs Seat near Melbourne and started at 5.30pm local time.
Nathan Haas secured his title as King Of The Mountains by taking the first climb before O'Grady, Kerby, Johnston, Northy, Oram, Shaw, Evans, Anderson, Pollock, Sulzberger, Lewis, Ploeg, Howson formed the first major break of the day with 30kms gone.
Ploeg took the first sprint as speeds hit 80kmph. This increase in speed affected race leader Arron Donnelly who dropped off the back off the peleton whilst Calvin Watson made his way up to the lead group.
With Donnelly over a minute and twenty seconds down on the lead group, Watson from Victoria was now the favourite to take the race.
And take it he did, as whilst Nathan Earle won the stage, Watson finished 21st, some 49 seconds ahead of Donnelly who came in 29th to win the race with Donnelly second and Josh Atkins third.
Watson told the race organisers about his victory: “This is my backyard and you couldn’t ask for a better place to train. I knew the climb back-to-front and I knew where I could ease off and where I had to really dig deep and I knew every corner and that really played into our hands,”
“We knew we had to put Donnelly under pressure so we raced for the win and that was our tactic and it paid of in the end because we got to the bottom (of the first climb) and Donnelly and Josh were straight out the back. We knew we had to race aggressive in the wind so it paid off.”