Wippert lands another Tour of Korea stage win

The Tour of Korea has been in the iron grip of the Antipodean teams with Wouter Wippert, Caleb Ewan and Patrick Bevin sharing the daily spoils.

Wouter Wippert (R) claimed his second Tour of Korea stage Source: Tour of Korea

Stage 6 was no different with Wippert taking his turn to finish ahead of Shiki Kuroeda (Nippo-Vini Fantini) and Avanti Racing Team’s Bevin.

"I had three really hard days" Wippert said. "I didn’t sleep at all (but) last night I fell asleep at 8:30pm until this morning at 8:30am, so I had a massive night. I woke up and felt really good today and my legs didn’t hurt at all. I said to the guys 'we have to commit today full gas in the last 30km' with the tailwind and crosswind and the boys did a terrific job. I had actually a perfect run-in.

“I was sitting on Brownie (team-mate Graeme Brown) with 1km to go. He turned around and said ‘follow my wheel and you will win today'.

“I didn’t say anything, I just followed him. He moved up more and, with 500m to go, he started. He chased Adam Blythe down and he started yelling 'go, go, go, go'. I knew I had a 55T on, so with a tailwind, it’s a small advantage. From the moment I started, I felt pretty safe."

The relatively flat 193.7km stage was always expected to be largely controlled by the three sprint-heavy teams - ORICA-GreenEDGE, Drapac Pro Cycling and Avanti Racing and that’s as it turned out.

The peloton let a break go 20km into the stage, but the result was inevitable as Rich Handley (JLT Condor), Amir Zargari (Pishgaman Giant) and Hyosuk Gong (KSPO) were caught 20km from the finish.

Following failed attacks by Kohei Uchima (Bridgestone Anchor) and Hossein Askari (Pishgaman Giant) the last 5km was a drag race between the sprint engines of the three top teams.

Lead out by two-time Olympic gold medalist Brown, Wippert soared ahead to comfortably claim line honours.

Ewan rolled across the line in fifth but the result was enough for him to retain his overall lead on Bevin and Orica-GreenEDGE team-mate, Adam Blythe.

"No one helped us today" Ewan said, "It was mostly just Jens (Mouris) and Heppie (Michael Hepburn) on front all day.

“It was good that there was only a small breakaway today, so it was a bit easier to control. A few teams tried to do something on the bridge but it wasn’t really windy enough. In the final, it was Adam (Blythe), Mitch (Docker) and I.

“When the attacks started to happen with 3km to go, we kind of lost each other a bit. I stayed back with Mitch but we were too far back in the last 500 metres and, with the tailwind, I couldn’t really make up enough ground."