Tessa Fabry Third In 2016 Tour of the King Valley Stage 1 Time Trial

High5 Dream Team’s Tessa Fabry has raced into third position in the 2016 Tour of the King Valley time trial, finishing just 11 seconds behind stage winner Lisen Hockings.

Samantha de Riter was the first member of the Dream Team to start, posting a time of 12:52.52. Wind and rain threatened to wreak havoc on the stage, however, the worst of it held off long enough for Kendelle Hodges to post a time of 12:41.24 to finish 14^th overall.

As the wind picked up, times started to tumble. Lucy Kennedy finished 6^th overall with a time of 12:16.12, while the last rider out of the gate, Rebecca Wiasak, claimed 4^th place after completing the course in 12:14.56.

For Fabry, her time of 12:09.41 saw her finish eight seconds behind second placed rider Kate Perry, and a further three seconds behind Hockings, leaving her perfectly placed heading into the two road stages.

After a strong result by the team, Fabry is excited at the opportunity for the team to apply pressure to the race leaders.

“We got pretty lucky this morning with the conditions. It didn’t start to rain until just towards the end of my race, so I managed to get out of that! It was quite windy out on the course, though. We had a ripping tailwind on the way out, which made coming back quite hard, so it was a bit hard to pace the race.

“With such small margins on GC, and with a couple of my High5 Dream Team teammates quite high on GC, we’ve got a few different cards to play tomorrow in the road race. With bonus points for the sprints and KOM’s, I think they will be hotly contested, and with the extra dirt sections, I think it will be really interesting to see how the race breaks up after the climb. Hopefully one of us can get away and we can get one of our riders into the leader’s jersey by the end of the day.”

High winds and flood warnings caused the Stage 2 criterium to be cancelled, a decision that Fabry believes will have a big impact on the remaining stages.

“There were lots of bonuses on offer in the criterium, so I think that will make the climbs even more decisive than they were going to be, as it reduces the sprinters chances a bit. I think the climbs tomorrow and Sunday are going to have an even bigger impact on GC than what they would have if the criterium went ahead,” finished Fabry.

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Images copyright Con Chronis