‘I finished empty’ - Amanda Spratt defeated on Willunga Hill

A fourth Tour Down Under title and a win atop Willunga Hill was not to be for Australia’s Amanda Spratt (Lidl-Trek), who finished fourth on stage 3 when the women’s race visited the iconic climb for the first time.

The 36-year-old had been a big pre-race favourite, with hopes of a Willunga victory planted firmly in her mind, but Spratt couldn’t follow stage winner Sarah Gigante’s powerful accelerations and missed out on the podium, finishing behind Neve Bradbury (Canyon-SRAM) in the sprint for third.

Read more: Tour Down Under stage 3: AG Insurance-Soudal's Sarah Gigante destroys field on Willunga Hill to win overall

“I do feel a bit disappointed, because obviously I was chasing the win here, a fourth is… Even a podium would have been nice in the end there, and I didn’t quite get it, so I mainly just feel disappointed for the team that I didn’t couldn’t reward all the hard work that’s gone into it with at least a podium,” Spratt said at the finish.

Lidl-Trek had been key animators on the road to Willunga, hitting the front through an exposed crosswinds section and trying to force a split before the climb, but the tactic didn’t quite pay off.

“They really supported me throughout all three stages and especially today, we tried in the crosswinds, and it was almost splitting but it just wasn’t really in our favour. They set me up perfectly to Willunga,” Spratt said of her teammates.

Hitting the climb, Spratt followed the elite group that formed, but her climbing level on the unforgiving ascent into a headwind wasn’t enough for the win.

“I finished empty, I really couldn’t have done much more,” she said. “Maybe I could have changed the last couple of hundred metres against Neve there, but not many regrets, put it that way. I think sometimes you just have to say that someone was stronger, and I think Sarah Gigante proved that today, she rode everyone off her wheel, even in a headwind climb. She was the strongest rider.”

Though the 3km climb up Willunga Hill is perhaps not the biggest climb the peloton will ever tackle, and certainly not for Spratt, a winner on plenty of tough terrain in Europe, it remains a difficult challenge, made more difficult by the exposed McLaren Vale roads that precede it.

“I think it’s difficult because you also have the run-in through Willunga, and we cross-headwinds through there, so it’s only a 3km climb but we also had 3 or 4km hard into it, so everyone is already a bit on their limit, and then it starts out and it’s kind of just unrelenting,” Spratt explained.

“You don’t really get any moment where it backs off. You don’t have any hairpins where you can ease off a bit, and it’s hard to split up the climb into segments, so it’s just 3km of unrelenting power. There’s not much room to just sort of relax.”

Spratt didn’t hide her disappointment about missing out in her home stage race, but the season is still early, and the veteran pro is already looking ahead to her next chances.

“Next obviously we have Cadel's Race so that will be the next one in Australia, then I head straight back to Europe after that. Starting with Valencia, Strade Bianche and moving into the Classics. So it wasn’t quite the start I was hoping for, but just building on this and keeping the confidence, we’ll look onto the next races now.”