"When I was riding in those crosswinds and thought I wouldn't make it, I just had to go super deep for them. The boys give me a heap of crap every night but I'm pretty flattered at how much work they're doing for me."
The time-trial now looms as the critical factor.
"I'm just going to go all out for that and ride as hard as I can and hopefully go into the final stage with a good advantage," Atkins said.
As riders struggled in squally conditions from the outset, Olphert Contracting's Jeremy Inglis had the most apt description.
"It looked like the field had been hit by a grenade and splintered in all directions," he said.
Gudsell, who is preparing to marry fiancee Sarah in just three weeks, said motivation was abundant.
"There were lots of things running through my head when I was solo with 25km to go. It was extremely tough but as I saw the time gaps going out it gave me more and more motivation to push harder and harder. By the end I'd turned myself inside-out to get as much time as I could," he said.
"We banked everything on trying to win the yellow jersey."
