Sydney Uni-Staminade competed in the first stage of the first women’s race of the National Road Series for 2018 held in Tweed Valley on Friday.
The Staminade riders in this event (teams are limited to five members) are Georgia Whitehouse, Emily Watts, Jade Colligan, Megan Scott and Anna Booth. The first stage was a road race, 87.4km long, being two laps of a undulating circuit (which the tour organisers described as being made up of a series of “pesky climbs”).
Sydney Uni were prominent throughout the race, with Megan and Georgie each securing a second out of the two Queen of the Mountain climbs, and Georgie taking out second and then first in the two intermediate sprints. Excitingly, Georgie went on to take second place in the stage itself, winning the bunch sprint amongst the group that was chasing the eventual stage winner, Grace Brown. Our young (U19) rider, Emily Watts, finished two seconds behind the chasing bunch, coming in ninth.
This is no mean feat by Georgie and the team, who were a fantastic help to her during the race. The stage winner, Grace Brown, has just returned from Europe where she was riding for the British Wiggle High5 team. Indeed, she came 21st last week in La Course by Le Tour de France, raced from Lake Annecy and finishing in Le Grand Bornand in France. Georgie, by comparison, spent last week studying hard for her Graduate Diploma in Psychology at Sydney University.
So after Stage One, provisional listings have Georgie Whitehouse second on General Classification, first in the Sprint Classification, and equal second (with team member Megan Scott) in the Mountain Classification. In the Young Rider classification, Emily Watts is in fourth, and ninth in the General Classification.
