STOKED TEAM: Hawke's Bay's Regan Gough (left) and his Mike Greer Homes team celebrate their team prologue victory on the Tour of Southland. PHOTO/JAMES JUBB
STOKED TEAM: Hawke's Bay's Regan Gough (left) and his Mike Greer Homes team celebrate their team prologue victory on the Tour of Southland. PHOTO/JAMES JUBB
Hawke's Bay's Rio Olympic Games cyclist Regan Gough will wear the yellow jersey for the opening stage of the SBS Bank Tour of Southland today.
The 2015 world team pursuit champion and his Mike Greer Homes teammates Jason Allen, Sam Horgan, Tim Rush, Michael Vink and Ben Johnstone took outyesterday's 4km team trial prologue around Invercargill's Queens Park to make an early statement in the 60th anniversary of New Zealand's most prestigious stage race.
"It was good to come away with it, we probably weren't the best team on paper so to do that we were all stoked," Waipukurau's Gough said.
"We ummed and ahhed - it is quite hard being in the yellow jersey in the first stage and you have a lot of responsibility put on your shoulders for not much (reward)."
A transponder issue meant that the prologue was unofficially claimed by the Kia Motors-Ascot Park Hotel team, who eventually had to settle for second place on the same time, while the Barry Stewart Builders team, which includes another Ramblers Cycling Club and Central Hawke's Bay Cycle Club member Luke Mudgway, was third, seven seconds in arrears.
Gough said changes to this year's race, with the major climbs of Coronet Peak and Bluff Hill in the middle of the week, would make for plenty of interesting racing.
"It's definitely going to be a tough tour this year, tomorrow and then up to Te Anau, Coronet and Bluff - the weather will play a huge part in how everything unfolds."
Gough's cousin and fellow Hawke's Bay rider Fraser Gough, finished ninth and three seconds behind Regan yesterday. He is a member of the Kia Motors-Ascot Park Hotel team.
Luke Mudgway was 12th. Mudgway's father John Mudgway is a member of the Vennell Coaching BP Cycling HB team which didn't finish among the top 10 in the 20-team field. None of the Bay team's riders finished among the top 25 in the 120-rider field.
Today's opening stage is a 170km beat starting in Invercargill and travelling through western and northern Southland before finishing in Lumsden. The tour ends on Saturday.
