Tour Down Under - Stage 5

This was it - the queen stage.  The one all the riders had been waiting for.  The one everyone said would be the decider - Willunga Hill.

The break went fairly early, and by the time it reached the township of Willunga, which the race would pass through five times during the day, nine kilometres from the depart, the six riders - Stuart O'Grady, GreenEDGE; Nathan Haas, Garmin-Barracuda; Thomas de Gendt, Vacansoleil-DCM; Andrew Fenn, Omega Pharma-Quickstep; Takashi Miyazawa, Saxobank; and Kristof Goddaert, AG2R La Mondiale, had a minute on the peloton.  O'Grady in particular was popular with the Australian crowd, eliciting a loud cheer as he rode past in his GreenEDGE jersey.  They continued picking up time on the unconcerned peloton, building up a lead that continued increasing as they made their way around the first lap.

The other teams were taking turns on the front of the peloton, BMC prominent in protecting the ochre jersey of Martin Kohler, as well as Movistar, clearly setting up their man Alejandro Valverde for a stage win and boost in the GC, and Rabobank.  The teams were having a minimal effect, though, as the six leaders raced through Willunga again with a lead that had ballooned out to seven minutes.  BMC clearly wasn't happy with this and put their collective foot down, stringing out the peloton as they reached Willunga and turned towards the beach on lap two.

Meanwhile, the leaders were reaching the first sprint point, but no-one was particularly interested in taking the points, Goddaert leading the break across the line to take first place with Fenn and O'Grady filling out the top three.  Despite the lack of sprinting at the sprint point, the gap to the peloton was still increasing, by now eight minutes ahead.  The peloton let it get out to almost 8:30 before they finally put the pedal down and started bringing the break in, Team Sky also joining the work at the front of the peloton, and by the time the leaders reached the feedzone in Willunga on lap three the gap had come down to around six minutes.

The leaders racing through their final lap of Willunga and McLaren Vale, Rabobank set up shop on the front of the peloton and increased the pace so much there were riders falling off the back.  Lampre-ISD had a small scare when their GC contender, Matt Lloyd, who was also a chance of winning the day's stage, fell off the back with the other riders, and his teammates had to drop back to help return him to the peloton.

There were only five in the break by the time they reached the second sprint point, Goddaert having fallen off the back with a mechanical problem, and this time it was Thomas de Gendt who rolled over the line first, again no-one in the break interested in contesting.  As O'Grady and Fenn agained clean up the top three points on offer, the gap continued going down, the only respite when the peloton swept through the feed station.  It was down to about 2:30 as the breakaway started up Willunga Hill for the first time, the race finally getting exciting as the peloton tried to catch them in time to set up the showdown that everyone was anticipating between the major GC contenders.

It was Nathan Haas who made the first move, attacking the break on the way up the hill and holding a lead of a couple of hundred metres as the peloton entered Willunga for the first ascent of the hill.  Thanks to the high pace-making from teams like BMC and Rabobank the peloton was now in two with a gap between and Steele von Hoff in no man's land between thanks to a crash.  On the front of the peloton Movistar's David Lopez attacked, taking GreenEDGE's Simon Gerrans and Lampre's Matty Lloyd, amongst others, with him as he tried to bridge the gap to the breakaway.

Lopez and entourage managed to catch the four poursuivants, Haas remaining defiant off the front of the bunch and claiming the maximum points for cresting the first King of the Mountain point in the lead, his chasers 50 seconds behind.  Still refusing to give up as the peloton rippled and shifted into groups behind him, Haas kept fighting until the nearest group of 30 riders, including Gerrans, race leader Martin Kohler and other favourites for the stage finally swamped him.

Then it was back around to Willunga for the final race up the hill, UniSA's Rohan Dennis making a storm as he escaped from the front group in a breakaway with Sky's Danny Pate, Radioshack Nissan Trek's Hayden Roulston and Movistar's Jose Ivan Gutierrez.  The breakaway soon dissipating on the slope, it was Dennis and Radioshack's Tiago Machado leading the way on the final climb up Willunga, before the front group of eager stage contenders caught them just as Simon Gerrans made his move, shadowed by Movistar's Valverde.

The two were neck and neck as they turned the final corner, the home crowd cheering enthusiastically for National Champion Gerro, only to have their hopes disappointed as Spanish sprinter Valverde's bike wheel pipped Gerro's by half a length.  Sky's Michael Rogers, trailing the pair since they left the group, chased them across the line for third.

But the real enigma of the win was the times of Gerrans and Valverde.  While Gerrans began the day four seconds ahead of Valverde in the GC, Gerrans only received a time bonus on the finish of six seconds, four seconds less than Valverde.  As such the two were on equal time at the end of the day's stage, but the ochre leader's jersey will go to Gerrans, as Gerrans placed higher than Valverde within the bunch on the previous days' stages, and Valverde must outplace Gerrans to take the jersey.  So the question rests for tomorrow's final stage at the crit in Adelaide: will Valverde attack in the hopes of gaining a few more seconds tomorrow, or will GreenEDGE's defence of Gerran's ochre prove too strong?