Lucy Kennedy has climbed into the lead of the 2016 National Capital Tour after a complete team performance delivered her to the base of Black Mountain, where Kennedy could display her extraordinary climbing ability, taking the win by seven seconds over Ruth Corset. National Road Series leader Lisen Hockings was a further 23 seconds behind.
After finishing second in the opening stage time trial to teammate Rebecca Wiasak, Kennedy was pleased to be able to keep the yellow jersey in the team.
‘That was hard work! It was always going to be hard work, so I was prepared to suffer for 10-12 minutes.
‘Lucy Bechtel got away from us on around Lap 3 and there wasn’t a huge amount of urgency in the peloton, but I think because she was away for so long it was a bit inevitable that she would slow down eventually.
‘My High5 Dream Team teammates were absolutely incredible! Beck (Wiasak) in the yellow jersey was driving the bunch, Kendelle (Hodges) was all over the place chasing everything, and Tessa (Fabry) finished awesome as well.
‘I needed to win that for the team because they had worked so hard for me, and I just had to deliver for two kilometres at the end. I felt really good, I’d just been eating and drinking all day, and coming into the climb Kendelle delivered me right to the front so I was right where I needed to be going into the climb.
‘We’ll see what happens tomorrow now, with the time bonuses we’re 1st, 4th, and 5th on GC so we still have options and we’ll go and make a plan!’
With one day and two stages of racing remaining, Kennedy leads Corset on General Classification by 21 seconds.
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