THE new season has started in the perfect way for 22-year-old Kaden Groves, making amends for last year's second place with a victory in the elite men's criterium held in glorious sunshine on Sturt Street on Friday night.
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The team BikeExchange rider was set-up in a tactically perfect race, finishing his 40 laps in 1:00.15.
Groves, along with teammate Luke Durbridge and Ballarat's Nick White, broke away from the field late and held on to fight out the finish together.
For a brief period, there was hopes of a local win when White took the lead up the home straight on the last lap, but Groves bided his time to perfection, coming off the White wheel with 100m to go to win the sprint to the finish.
While Durbridge finished five seconds behind in third, the result was a huge tick for the Australian national BikeExchange team, formerly GreenEDGE, after a silver medal performance in the team time trial.
"We always wanted two of us in the move," Groves said. "This means a lot, especially for us as an Australian team, it's always nice to win in Oz. It's the first national crit title for me and it hasn't sunk in yet, but I'm pretty stoked."
Waking up to a thunderstorm in the morning, the cyclists faced a headwind up the hill towards the finish.
"It neutralised all the guys attacking up the home straight, so I knew we had to go out at the last corner - it was absolutely non-stop, with a tailwind down the back straight everyone recovers," Groves explained.
"Attacking into the headwind was non-stop until the last 10 minutes.
"The crit's completely different in the dry, that's why it was so attacking and a lot faster."
For runner-up Nick White, it was a case of so close, yet so far, in front of his home town supporters.
"I definitely wasn't expecting it at all, I was just using it as an opener before Sunday," White said, still visibly elated.
"It's always good to come away with a podium, third last year and second this year, hopefully I've started an upward trend for 2022.
"The whole Ballarat community's been pretty stoked, it's awesome to get a result in front of them."
With breakaways unable to escape the pack for long, the aggressive pace in the men's race was noticeably quicker than last year, where cyclists faced pounding rain and much stronger wind.
Groves' winning time was four minutes faster than 2020 winner Sam Welsford's.
The sprint title was hotly contested - Matthew Ross knocked over the first two intermediate sprints and cleared the third in second to finish top of the table, and was named most aggressive for his trouble.
RESULTS
ELITE MEN: Kaden GROVES 1h00:15; Nicholas WHITE - same time, Luke DURBRIDGE +5
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