HTC-Columbia’s Andre Greipel has repeated his performance of the last two years, winning the first stage and earning the ‘ochre’ leader’s jersey of the Santos Tour Down Under.  Greipel finished off the work of his teammates to win in a bunch sprint at the end of the 141km stage from Clare to Tanunda in South Australia.

“It’s very nice to start the season this way,” said a happy Greipel after the stage. ‘We took control of the race and my teammates did a very good job to get me to the finish in good position.”

“Starting with Grabschy [Bert Grabsch] who did a lot of work to bring the break back during the race and finishing with the rest of the team who set me up for the sprint at the end, it was a very good day,” he added.

“At seven kilometers to go we started to build up for the finish which was a little early so it wasn’t until three kilometers to go that we really started. Matt Goss had a broken spoke so was one of the first in the lead out rather than the last and Bernie [Eisel] kept me out of trouble at the end. Liquigas started the sprint and I waited until the last moment to come around.”

“Tomorrow is another flat stage and could be another sprint,” he added, “but after that we have a few hard stages which will be harder to control. However we have a strong team and we will try our best.”