TOUR OF SOUTHLAND CYCLING: Allnut rides well on day of punctures

It's not every day one can claim to zip past a Tour de France-calibre rider.
When you are not in the field then the next best thing is to be there when it does happen.
Hawke's Bay rider Daniel Warren yesterday savoured that moment when his Placemakers teammate, Brent Allnut, showed a clean pair of heels to American Floyd Landis during stage 5 of the Tour of Southland.
What made it even sweeter for the Southland-born, Hokitika-based rider was achieving the feat on a day when punctures added to the misery.
"He got a back-wheel puncture so I gave him a spare wheel and a tow back," Warren, 29, of Taradale told SportToday.
Allnut, the only Placemakers rider to avoid Monday's crash, was team leader and about 30km from the finish line of the 101.7km stage Waiau to Winton.
He was in the second bunch of five when the puncture emerged.
"The wind had dropped off so Brent caught up with them [Landis' bunch] and rode past him while trying to catch up with the final bunch," he said of Allnut who finished 17th to help his four-man team retain their general classification position.
Warren, who finished prematurely on Monday after two crashes, said teammate Jason Barlow had also won the prize of the first Southland rider across the line yesterday.
Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) rider Dylan Stewart (pictured), of Napier, and his team are facing an even more arduous task at the tour, which offered an 88.4km stage in the morning from Invercargill to Tuatapere.
"It was pretty windy today and we had some bad luck with flat tyres and the crashes on Monday didn't help," said the 34-year-old manager of the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) fitness gym.
The SIT boys lost two riders in Monday's pile-up - Stewart and Aucklander Dion Neems.
New Plymouth rider Simon Brown, the best at 60th in the general classification, said: "It's a bit of a mess ... but it's pretty much what we expected."
He said he knew top Bay riders who were tour veterans and he and his all-rookie teammates were under no illusions what Southland was going to throw at them.
"Every one of us are first timers and our goal was to finish and to come back next year and do better," he said of the SIT team in its second year of the tour.
Stewart, who rated the region and its people as wonderful hosts for injecting enthusiasm and spirit into the event, said: "I'll definitely be back next year."
Bissell Pro rider Jeremy Vennell, of Hastings, is sitting third overall.
* Results - page 10.