Urs Huber, Abby McLennan win Crocodile Trophy
Urs Huber didn’t have to be at his best in the final time-trial of the Crocodile Trophy in order to secure the overall victory in the 10-day race, but he was.
Huber won the first and last stages of the Australian mountain-bike race, taking his victory in the final time-trial 28 seconds ahead of the runner-up in both the stage and the
race, Bart Brentjens. The pair was distantly followed in the time-trial by Mike Mulkens 5:37 behind and Cory Wallace 6:20 behind.
Only 16 elite men finished the race. Huber started the race as the defending champion and was never moved from the race leader position since taking the win in the first stage.
Runner-up Brentjens won the next two stages and took a third victory in stage seven, ultimately finishing the event 5:17 behind. Mulkens joined them on the podium despite a lack of stage wins. Austrian Philipp Ludescher won the fourth and ninth stages but
mechanical difficulties kept him out of the general classification. Allan Oras won stage eight and finished in fourth, with Wallace rounding out the top-five.
The 38km10th stage time-trial began at 9:00AM on Thursday morning in Ayton. 66 mountain-bikers in five categories between the ages of 23 and 60 raced the time-trial in reverse order
of their overall classification standing. Brentjens dominated in the flat early part of the race while Huber shined in the uphills of the North Queensland rainforest. The 25-year old Swiss winner crossed the finish line in Cape Tribulation after 1:15 on the
course.
Thirty-year-old Abby McLennan’s victory in the women’s classification was even more assured before the stage than was Huber’s and she finished the event with a lead of more than eight hours ahead of runner-up
Lauretta Howarth, who finished the time-trial 11 minutes and 43 seconds behind McLennan, the winner. They were joined on the podium by Nancy Caceres, third place in the stage and overall. McLennan finished the final stage in 1:51 and moved to first in the
event from her third-place finish last year.
The Masters classification was won by Jaan Kirsipuu, having beaten the Elite men to the finish line in stage four, preventing Ludescher from winning the boomerang trophy awarded to the first across the
line in every stage, though the latter rider went on to take a boomerang in stage nine. Kirsipuu was joined on the podium by his Estonian teammate Indrek Kelk and their team, Rietumu-Delfin, won the overall team’s classification among all categories.
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