Baden Cooke © Cyclingpost.com

VICTOR HARBOR, Jan 19 (CP) – Unibet.com rider Baden Cooke has taken out stage three of the Tour Down Under held on Friday. The Australian sprinter powered away to victory in the closing stages of the 128-kilometer race run in treacherous conditions. It's was Cooke's fourth stage victory at the tour, on a day where riders experienced rain for the very first time in the tour's nine year history. When interviewed during sign-on prior to the stage start, most riders indicated that attacks would be the order of the day. The riders left the Adelaide hill's town of Stirling with the temparature a relatively mild 22 degrees celsius. It wasn't long however before things started to hot up on the course. Ten kilometers into the stage, a group of nineteen riders were able to split from the peloton and they held onto their small advantage of about twenty seconds until the first intermediate sprint. Navigator's Viktor Rapinski took the points from Josep Jufre Pou (Predictor - Lotto) and Team CSC's Matthew Goss. The pace remained fast as the nineteen riders continued in their attempts to break away from an aggressive peloton. After seventy-five minutes of racing the riders had already covered 66 kilometers, making them over 25 minutes ahead of schedule. The hard riding by the breakaway finally paid off, they had increased their gap on the main group to four minutes, and despite the start of rain they continued to ride hard. The second and last intermediate sprint was again taken out by Rapinski with Christophe Laurent (Credit Agricole) second, and Scott Lyttle (New Zealand National Team) third. With the king of the mountain points on offer just five kilometers after the feed station, Giampaolo Cheula (Barloworld) attacked during the feed zone and was able to get a small break on the rest of the breakaway group during the short, steep climb of Kerby Hill. Cheula was first over the hill followed by diminutive Ag2r rider Samuel Dumoulin and Jufre Pou. The fight for king of the mountain points splintered the lead group and increased the gap on the peloton by over nine minutes. With nearly 40 kilometers of riding left Cheula chanced his arm and decided to go for a solo victory. But with the rain now pouring down, making conditions dangerous, it wasn't long before the original nineteen were back together again. Despite rain now running across the roads, the breakaway continued to press forward causing the weaker riders to drop off the back. With just six kilometers of racing to go, Wim Vansevenant made the first counter-attack. Despite his efforts, the Predictor – Lotto rider couldn't get his lead to any bigger than 50 meters and he was caught and dropped by the now six remaining riders with four kilometers to go. Unlike yesterday's stage, all six riders were from different teams, so it became a case of the strongest rider wins. All six were together as they crossed the one-kilometer banner. Shortly after though Cooke powered free. UniSA's Chris Jongewaard attempted to go with Cooke but couldn't get onto his wheel, whilst the other four riders could only sit and watch. Cooke won comfortably from Jongewaard by five seconds, with Australian Matthew Goss winning the four-man sprint for third, a further fourteen seconds back. The remnants of the 19-man breakaway came in over the next few minutes, with Robbie McEwen (Predictor – Lotto) leading the main group in home 14'10" after Cooke crossed the line. Due to the excessive speed of the breakaway, the stage was run a full forty-seven minutes quicker than anticipated, all the more impressive considering the treacherous conditions the riders experienced. There were no changes to the overall standings since all the major contenders stayed safe in the peloton. This means UniSA's Karl Menzies (Australia) will retain his one second lead over Swiss rider Martin Elmiger (Ag2r) heading into Saturday's race defining stage around Willunga. Though there were no changes to the overall standings, both the sprinter's and king of the mountain's competitions have new leaders. By winning both intermediate sprints, Viktor Rapinski has leap-frogged Team CSC's Luke Roberts in the quest for the spinter's jersey. Despite being the second rider over Kerby Hill, Samuel Dumoulin did enough to take the lead in the king of the mountain's jersey. Stage results: 1. Bade Cooke (Aus-UNI) 2h37'55" 2. Chris Jongewaard (Aus-AUS) 0'05" 3. Matt Goss (Aus-CSC) 0'19" 4. Josep Jufre Pou (Esp-PRL) s.t. 5. Samuel Dumoulin (Fra-A2R) s.t. 6. Giampaolo Cheula (Ita-BAR) s.t. 7. Matti Breschel (Den-CSC) 0'41" 8. Dimitri Champion (Fra-BTL) 0'42" 9. Wim Vansevenant (Bel-PRL) 1'28" 10. Jeremy Hunt (GBr-UNI) 2'52" General classification: 1. Karl Menzies (Aus-AUS) 10h36'38" 2. Martin Elmiger (Sui-A2R) 0'01" 3. Lars Bak (Den-CSC) 0'07" 4. Matthew Lloyd (Aus-PRL) 0'09" 5. Gustav Larsson (Swe-UNI) 0'17" 6. Luke Roberts (Aus-CSC) 0'46" 7. Gene Bates (Aus-SAI) s.t. 8. Yannick Talabardon (Fra-C.A) 0'51" 9. Paolo Longo Borghini (Ita-BAR) s.t. 10. Simon Clarke (Aus-SAI) 1'04" Points classification: Viktor Rapinski (Blr-NIC) Mountains classifcation: Samuel Dumoulin (Fra-A2R) Teams classification: SouthAustralia.com – AIS (Aus) Young riders classification: Simon Clarke (Aus-SAI) 10h37'42"

© Michael Holden