CYCLING

Daily Diary: Joe Cooper talks Tour de Korea – Stage 7

By Aaron S Lee

Aussie Caleb Ewan sprints to fourth stage win, while Kiwi Patrick Bevin takes second and Avanti teammate Joe Cooper shares the story.

DAEJEON, South Korea—Australian Caleb Ewan’s homecoming was made a little sweeter with a surprise visit from his parents prior to his stage 7 win over Kiwi Patrick Bevin (Avanti Racing Team) and Dutchman Wouter Wippert (Drapac Pro Cycling) on Saturday.

The win marks the 20-year-old neo-pro’s fourth of the race and the ninth of his rookie campaign – four more than Orica-GreenEdge sports director Matt White had targeted for 2015.

For the 24-year-old Bevin, who now trails Ewan by eight seconds after losing four seconds of bonus time at the finish in Daejeon, the second-place finish marks his sixth podium in seven stages – including four seconds, a third and a stage 4 victory – with a final 65-kilometre city circuit in Seoul remaining on Sunday.

With the win, Bevin will need to win stage 8 and hope Ewan does not make top three or pick up any intermediate sprint points.

NZ Bike caught up with reigning New Zealand road race champion and the 2014 Australian National Road Series winner Joe Cooper to talk about the stage and the odds of Bevin taking the yellow with one day remaining.







Joe Cooper’s diary entry: Stage 7 – Gunsan - Daejeon, 145.8km
The first 50 kilometres everyone was racing, and I enjoy that aspect as you get to slip in to moves. Constant waves that surge up and back, and some people are good at following the moves that are more likely to stick than the ones that go out there and come back instantly.

You have to pick, or earmark, a couple of people you are willing to follow in to the move, so it takes out the randomness of following someone that is really not going to go anywhere.
The stage was only 145km, so the shorter the stage everyone feels like they can race the whole distance as opposed to having to the break go and just setting tempo. That’s why the first hour was lightening quick, because everyone was like let’s get through that so that they only have another two hours to go. For most riders, three hours is pretty easy to race through.

Once the break was gone and Orica-GreenEdge was controlling the race, we were just doing our best to help support our GC contender Patrick Bevin, and get him as much ice and water as we can to get him ready to do his thing. Not everyone on the team is able to help in that last couple of kilometres, but everyone still has their role.
Paddy is just eight seconds out, and with time bonuses remaining, he still have a shot at taking out the leaders jersey. Winning the tour is not quite a long shot and is still within reach.

Best-case scenario, Paddy wins the stage and race leader Caleb Ewan runs outside the time bonuses. If he has a mechanical in the 3km, then he would record bunch time and not earn any time bonuses. That’s not the way Paddy would want to win the race, but if he did he wouldn’t be giving the yellow jersey back I promise you.

Either way, this has been a great week. It’s the longest week racing on the bike I’ll do all year kilometres-wise. I’ve loved every minute and I look forward to finishing tomorrow.
Even if we can’t build on what we’ve done this week, it’s still a pretty amazing team effort to get us in this position anyway – plus we are still sitting atop teams classification which is also a nice little prize!

In the meantime, stay tuned...
-Joe Cooper


Tomorrow’s entry: Stage 8 – Seoul - Seoul, 65km
Stage 7 results (top 5)
1.    Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEdge)                           3:16:55
2.    Patrick Bevin (Avanti Racing Team)                            -
3.    Wouter Wippert (Drapac Pro Cycling)                         -
4.    Shiki Kuroeda (Nippo-Vini Fantini)                              -
5.    Sung Baek Park (KSPO)                                             -

General classification (top 5)
1.    Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEdge)                            28:31:21
2.    Patrick Bevin (Avanti Racing Team)                          +00.08
3.    Adam Blythe (Orica-GreenEdge)                               +00.43
4.    Ha Jeon Jung (Seoul Cycling Team)                         +00.48
5.    Richard Handley (JLT Condor)                                          -

Aaron S. Lee is a cycling and triathlon columnist for Eurosport and a guest contributor to NZ Bike Magazine. Photo credit: Daebong Kim | Velo Paper