Simon Clarke wins the fourth stage of the Vuelta a Espana 2012
Simon Clarke of Team Orica-GreenEdge helped the Australian team with a much required victory during the stage 4 of the Vuelta a Espana 2012.
A victory from the 26-year-old was long overdue and he managed to meet the expectations of his General Manager by performing at the third and the final Grand Tour race of the season.
The cyclist completed the 160.6 kilometre race in an impressive time of 4 hours, 30 minutes and 26 seconds and restricted the race favourites.
Tony Martin was also looking good and rode brilliantly throughout the race but fell 2 seconds short of his Australian opponent.
Assan Bazayev of Team Astana, Marcos Garcia of Team Caja Rural and Nicolas Roche of Team AG2R La Mondiale occupied the third, fourth and the fifth positions in the respective order.
The cyclist occupied the second overall position during the Glava Tour of Norway and claimed the fifth overall position during the Tour du Haut-Var.
"Tony is a really good time trialist, but I thought I could have him in a sprint. I made sure to have him in front in the wind,” Clarke said.
“This is my first win as pro, I've been a pro for four years and I've tried so many times, I've had so many seconds and third places, I'm just so happy”.
"It was such a long day with so much wind in the finish. I knew Tony would be strong, but I wanted to make it a hard climb because I knew Bazayev is fast”.
Luis Angel Mate Mardones of Team Cofidis, Le Credit En Ligne wins the first and the second sprints of the race while Simon Clarke of Team Orica-GreenEdge succeeded during the third sprint of the event.
Luis Angel Mate of Team Cofidis Le Credit en Ligne while Simon Clarke of Team Orica-GreenEdge occupied the first and the second mountain category of the event.
Joaquim Rodriguez Oliver is leading the stage 4 classifications with a leads of 1 second over Christopher Froome of Team Sky Procycling.
Alberto Contador of Team Saxo Bank-Tinkoff Bank, Bauke Mollema of Team Rabobank and his team-mate Robert Gesink occupies the third, the fourth and the fifth positions in the respective order.
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