The results sheet shows that Sam Welsford (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) has now won the first two stages of the 2025 Santos Tour Down Under, but today’s stage 2 was far from a cakewalk for the West Australian sprinter.
While his stage 1 victory was about as textbook as they come – early break caught, great lead-out, sprint victory – Welsford had several more hurdles to overcome on Wednesday’s stage 2 in the Barossa Valley.
Less than 2 km into the stage, with Welsford in the ochre jersey of overall leader, there was a small mishap in the bunch and the 29-year-old clattered to the ground. Not the ideal start.
“Unfortunately, it was just a touch of wheels in the start, just after the break went,” Welsford said later. “So, ricochet effect and I got the bad end of it, actually, but it wasn’t too bad. Just a bit of skin off. I’ve had worse. It just ended up being annoying because half my arse was hanging out for the whole stage.”
A few hours later, with the break caught and the peloton on the steep Menglers Hill climb with around 25 km to go, Welsford found himself slipping off the back. At the front, a series of attacks were flying, with the opportunists trying to thwart the predicted bunch sprint. When the dust settled over the top, Welsford was in a small group a few hundred metres behind the peloton and facing a tricky little chase back.
“They didn’t make it easy for me on that climb,” Welsford said. “I knew they were going to start launching attacks, and we just tried to keep a steady pace. It ended up being probably a little bit harder than we expected but we had a good chase to get back on, and my team looked after me super well today.”
Welsford had teammate Ben Zwiehoff there for support in the chase group, but when it was clear the gap wasn’t closing, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s sports directors sent Welsford’s final lead-out man Danny van Poppel back to help as well.
“I had to pull Sam back, and I was over the limit,” Van Poppel told Escape of the frantic effort that followed. “In this heat, you can do not much – just a few pulls, and then I’m done.”
Van Poppel admits that he wasn’t sure they would get back.
“There was one moment for a few seconds [where] I was like, ‘Oh, this will be hard, because the peloton is going faster than us in the downhill,’” Van Poppel said.
Welsford also spoke of the difficulty of that moment.
“It’s always stressful when you see the bunch attacking and riding away from you, but we just tried to keep calm,” he said. “Eventually they were going to slow down; we just had to keep them in check, keep them really close.”
With a little under 16 km to go, the team dropped Laurence Pithie back as well, just to ensure Welsford would get back on. Sure enough, one kilometre later, the potential crisis was averted.
With the finish line still 15 km away, Welsford and co had time to recover a little before the chaos of the bunch sprint. Other teams took to the front in the closing kilometres, but by 2.5 km to go, the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe lead-out train was assembled in a long line at the front of the bunch with Welsford in prime position.
Despite their exertions in the earlier chase, Welsford’s teammates delivered what sports director Shane Archbold described to Escape as a “picture-perfect lead-out” that allowed Welsford “a real armchair ride to the line”. After a big turn from Pithie to get the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe train to the very front of the bunch, Van Poppel dropped Welsford off within 200 metres of the line. From there, Welsford did the rest.
While Welsford managed to win stage 1 yesterday, he admitted afterwards that he’d gone a little early in the sprint. On stage 2, he was much happier with his timing.
“Today was a lot more calculated,” he said. “Laurence did a really good job, and Ryan [Mullen] and Danny also. Danny can go so long in these lead-outs, and I just have to really look for that moment that he really wants me to go instead of, like, giving me space. And then, I think I kicked off with 200 [metres to go] or maybe less. So I had a really good run. And think I was just getting faster in the sprint. So wound up that big gear and yeah, it was a good one.”
Welsford waited until after the line to celebrate today, ensuring Belgian Arne Marit (Intermarché-Wanty) would have to settle for second and Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) third.
Van Poppel told Escape that he was impressed that Welsford had even been in a position to contest the finish today; that he was able to get over the final climb close enough to the front that they could help him get back on.
“I’m a bit surprised, because last year he could not do this,” the Dutchman said. “It was a tough climb.”
An obvious question, then: what’s changed between last year and now?
“I don’t know,” Van Poppel said. “He trained with me the whole winter, maybe that?” he said with a chuckle. “No, I don’t know. He looks really good, especially after the crash. He’s a bit sore, but it was a good day.”
Welsford had spoken after stage 1 about the new training regime he employed over the off-season, focusing on his aerobic capacity. He said today that his stage 2 victory was testament to the work he’s done.
“I really wanted to show the training I’ve been doing and the prep I’ve done over the winter that I can suffer on these harder days and still produce a good sprint in the end today,” he said. “And yeah, I was really, really happy to pay the team back after their work. They believe in me and commit to me 100% in any day they can. My legs were screaming in that lead-out, because I was already on the limit for so long. But I just knew that I had to do it for them, because they looked after me so well today.”
According to the race jury, Van Poppel looked after Welsford a little too well today. After completing his lead-out, Van Poppel pulled off to the left then, looking back, drifted over to the right, thereby impeding the sprint of Tobias Lund Andresen (Picnic PostNL).
Van Poppel was relegated from seventh on the stage to 118th – last in the main bunch – with the official communique citing article 2.12.007-5.1 of the UCI rules: “Deviation from the chosen line that obstructs and endangers another rider”. Van Poppel was also fined 500 Swiss francs, docked seven points in the points classification, three points in the KOM competition, and given a yellow card – a new safety initiative from the UCI.
While none of those sanctions will have any bearing on Welsford’s victory, Van Poppel needs to be careful – a second yellow card this week will see him disqualified from the race.
With his victory today, Welsford extends his lead in the general classification to 14 seconds over Marit and Matthew Brennan (Jumbo-Visma). While he’ll wear the ochre jersey into tomorrow’s stage 3, Welsford has no expectations of doing so by day’s end.
“Stage three is very different so I think we’ll be maybe helping other people tomorrow,” Welsford said with a chuckle. “We have the leader’s jersey, but I think a lot of it is up to a lot of teams what they want to do. I’d say stage 3 is the hardest stage of the Tour. I think for GC, this is the big shakedown. It’ll be very tactical and very strategic what teams throw out there tomorrow.”
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