There are no shortage of tales of riders being broken by a challenging mountain climb, but on Sunday it felt more like Luke Plapp (Ineos Grenadiers) and Sarah Gigante (Movistar) broke the mountain.
Records crumbled on Australia's Mount Buffalo under the unrelenting pressure of the duo, with Gigante and Plapp claiming the final stage of the Bright Brewery Tour of Bright as well as final overall victory at the event in Victoria's High Country.
Gigante was in the box seat when she entered the third and final stage of the two-day Victorian Road Series race, which provided a rare opportunity for domestic riders to match up against returning WorldTour professionals. Already leading on the general classification the rider who looked unassailable heading into the stage, particularly given she'd offered more than just a hint of the strength of her climbing form on Tawonga Gap on Saturday.
That form held firm through the final 63.7km stage winding through the middle of the riverside tourist location of Bright, past Porepunkah and then up Mount Buffalo to Dingo Dell.
First Gigante blew aside the Strava Queen of the Mountain that Georgie Howe had set at the 2022 Tour of Bright, shaving more than two minutes off the time. Then the Movistar rider kept the pace high for the remaining four kilometres, to take first place on the stage. Katelyn Nicholson (Butterfields Racing), who has come over to cycling from rowing, was 1:42 back in second and then it was Kathryn McInerney at 3:10.
It was a performance that extended Gigante's overall lead to 4:58 and left her heading into a new season with an encouraging show of form and an appreciation for the continued growth in the strength of Australian cycling. “A great way to kick off the summer down under,” said Gigante in a post presentation interview with race organisers.
McInerney, a local mountain biker who also took fifth at the Gravelista UCI Gravel World Series race a little over a month ago, was second overall while Justine Barrow (Roxsolt Liv SRAM) came third. The 18 and 19 year old ARA-Skip Capital riders, Sophie Marr and Lucinda Stewart, took fourth and fifth.
'I was all in'
Plapp started the day on the back foot in the general classification, a break having ruled the day on Tawonga and, despite his staggering speed on the final climb that day, he was ninth overall with a 4:10 deficit at the end of stage 1. Then on that afternoon's stage 2 he scorched through the time trial to claim an emphatic win in the race against the watch, moving up to fifth overall, but the margin to Oliver Stenning (Blackshaw Racing) in first place still remained at 2:43. Even the podium was a minute and a half away.
The overall lead may have seemed too far from reach but there was still no doubt that Plapp had a target clearly in mind, he was too exuberant to hide it.
“I knew Plappy wanted to go for the KOM, everyone was going to be watching him," Luke Burns (Team BridgeLane) told Cyclingnews at Dingo Dell, after the stage finish. "And I was feeling pretty good at the bottom so was able to follow him and thought I’m better off swapping off with him, helping him out – if I just sit on he was going to whack it and drop me so I hung on for as long as I could."
The two riders swapped turns at the front until near 52km into the stage, with Burns adding that he just "grovelled to the top" once dropped. Still, despite that description of his ride, it was clear that the Team BridgeLane rider fought hard to maintain the pace, crossing the line in second place. He was on the same time as third-placed Alexander Evans (Bendigo and District Cycling Club), who had done an enormous amount of work earlier in the stage to push the pace.
As Plapp went on alone the pace remained unrelenting as he picked off rider after rider from those grades that had set off before Men A. He was getting regular shouts of encouragement, both from locals that had warmed to the rider who had embraced their town as his summer home and other racers in the lower grades that were simply revelling in the spectacle of the Australian champion delivering an unprecedented pace on the climb they had just slogged up. Even Women A winner Gigante couldn't resist slowing to deliver a shout of encouragement as she descended the climb after her race win.
The KOM approached and Plapp, dripping with sweat, kept pushing and the Strava segment was unequivocally his. He didn't just edge the target down a little, but with a time of 41:18 for the 18km section averaging 5.6%, he smashed more than three minutes off the record which had stood since 2019. Plapp had been eyeing it since beginning to race the climb as a junior and deciding that Mount Buffalo was "my favourite climb in the world".
"I just went all in for the KOM and everything that happened after that was a bonus,” Plapp told Cyclingnews at the top of the climb.
Such was the pace that had been inspired through the field, that five other riders also slipped into the next places on the Strava segment, but even though the pace of those behind was high, the gaps Plapp had pulled out made it increasingly evident there was more at stake than the KOM – overall victory was now in reach.
Plapp was clearly feeling the effort of that dash to the King of the Mountain point through the remaining four kilometres but belting through the short downhill section before the road kicked up again. While the intensity of the focus it took to keep the pedals turning quickly through those final kilometres showed clearly in his face, there was not even a hint of easing off.
As a result he achieved something that at the start of the stage had looked like a pipe dream – the trifecta of the KOM, stage win and overall victory. In his final race before swapping his Ineos Grenadiers kit for the Jayco-AlUla livery Plapp won the GC with a 1:15 margin to second placed Oliver Stenning (Blackshaw Racing) and 2:08 to Jack Aitken (St George).
It was a victory that may be perceived by some as of little consequence on the results tally, given this is a rider that spends the rest of the season in pursuit of international results. Still it is abundantly clear that to Plapp – and many, many more – that there's so much more to this Victorian Road Series race in the heart of his off-season community than a category marked on a piece of paper.
“It was just a great race and I love racing up here," said the Australian champion of the Bright event, which started more than 30 years ago. "I’ve got a smile on my face and it's just my favourite place to ride a bike. I was all in."
