Campbell Flakemore bagged the eighth stage of the Tour of Tasmania 2012
Campbell Flakemore managed to open his winning account at the Tour of Tasmania 2012 after his storming performance during the 77.9 kilometre stage 8 of the race.
The cyclist took a total time 2 hours, 6 minutes and 16 seconds to climb the top podium position and restricted his major opponents.
He was challenged by Bradley Linfield of Team Plan B Racing, Sam McCallum of Team Polygon and Neil Van Der Ploeg of Team Search2Retain but Team Genesys cyclist succeeded to claim the top spot.
Bradley Linfield, Sam McCallum, Neil Van Der Ploeg and Harry Carpenter occupied the second, third, fourth and the fifth positions in the respective order.
Campbell noted that he wanted to make it through the overall classifications but he is having a tough time and is content with a stage win.
“I knew people thought I might be up there in the general classification but it’s such a hard tour,” he said.
“I had a bad day on the second stage. You have one bad day here and you can lose 10 minutes”.
Neil Van Der Ploeg of Team Search2Retain, Brodie Talbot of Team Central Coast Cycling and Peter Herzig of Team Budget Forklifts succeeded during the opening sprint of the race with 3, 2 and 1 points respectively.
Sam Sautelle, Campbell Flakemore and Brodie Talbot won the first, second and the third mountains of the race while Jay Bourke of Team Downunder bagged the fourth, fifth and the sixth climbs of the event.
Brodie Talbot of Team Central Coast Cycling was given the Aggressor award for showing some gutsy skills during the stage.
Lachlan Norris of Team Drapac Professional Cycling continuous his overall lead after the stage 8 classifications and is comfortably placed to claim the overall victory.
He finished the race at the 14th position and thanked his teammates for their endless support throughout the opening eight days of the race.
"The boys rode so well," Norris said at the finish.
"I was just sitting there with seven guys in front of me today. All of the boys just covered everything”.
"I’m pretty confident we can (keep the yellow jersey)".
It will be interesting to see if Norris manages to maintain the momentum and keep Mark O’Brien and Nathan Earle from securing the top position during the final stage of the race.
Top ten cyclists after the Tour of Tasmania stage 8 classifications are as below,
1
Lachlan Norris (Drapac Professional Cycling)
13:36:02
2
Mark O'Brien (Team Budget Forklifts)
0:00:14
3
Nathan Earle (Genesys Wealth Advisers Professional Cycling Team)
0:00:51
4
Jay Mccarthy (Jayco - Apollo - VIS)
0:03:28
5
Darren Lapthorne (Drapac Professional Cycling)
0:03:57
6
Peter Herzig (Team Budget Forklifts)
0:04:03
7
Jai Crawford (Genesys Wealth Advisers Professional Cycling Team)
0:04:05
8
Ben Dyball (Genesys Wealth Advisers Professional Cycling Team)
0:04:17
9
Alex Clements (Team Polygon Australia)
0:05:02
10
Bradley Linfield (Plan B Racing)
0:05:51
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