“I’ve been waiting ten years for this victory, my first on the World Tour. Bryan Coquard, 30, is off to a perfect start to 2023. Winner of 47 races since the start of his career, the Frenchman gleaned his first success in the first division of world cycling, winning the fourth stage of the Tour Down Under , in Australia.
The Cofidis rider won in Willunga at the end of the penultimate stage, 133.2 kilometers long, ahead of the Italian Alberto Bettiol (EF Education EasyPost) and the Frenchman Hugo Page (Intermarché Circus Wanty).
“That was the goal for 2023”
“I am very proud and very happy. I won a lot of races, but never on the World Tour. That was the goal for 2023, so getting there in January is good news,” said Coquard, silver medalist in the omnium at the London Olympics (2012).
Despite a “very stressful day”, Australian Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates) maintained his 15-second lead in the general classification over Briton Simon Yates (Team Jayco-AlUla) before the fifth and final stage on Sunday between Unley and Mount Lofty, for 112.5 km.
“I don’t sell the skin of the bear before I have killed it,” said the winner of two stages in the Vuelta last year. But we can say that tomorrow is the day when we will have the strongest team for the finish at Mount Lofty. On Sunday, the peloton will climb the short but steep summit of Mount Lofty five times on a circuit course above the city of Adelaide.