20-year old Campbell Jones (OLIVER’S RACING) was not about to let a rainy day dampen his desire to win L’Etape Australia 2019, he just waited 115 wet kilometers to unleash his plan – ride everyone off his wheel and solo to victory.
It worked.
On the 170km mountainous course, Jones made his move on Col de Kosciuszko in the Snowy Mountains, a relentless unforgiving 23km climb with 900m vertical ascent. At the top he had a 2-minute lead before starting a 33km descent, where moto-police struggled to keep up with Jones’ daredevil high-speed descending.
As Jones crossed under the finish banner in 4:37:20 to win his first L’Etape race, he still had 1:13 on runner-up Jay Vine and a whopping 10-minutes on Ben Metcalfe, who earned the final podium step.
German Nadine Gill, winner of L’Etape Brasil, claimed victory in the women’s race in 5:17:55 and finished 39th overall. Jessica Prat and Vicki Whitelaw were 2nd and 3rd respectively, finishing 2:32 behind Gill.
2000 riders participated in L’Etape Australia, the only L’Etape gran fondo race in Australia, with 1265 completing the 170km gran fondo race and 657 finishing the 108km medio fondo.
GRAN FONDO DAILY NEWS 