Roman van Uden survived a brutal day to win the full opening stage of the Tour of Southland yesterday.
Van Uden was rewarded with the yellow jersey for today's second stage to Bluff and it was his second stage win in the tour.
The Aucklander was part of a five-man breakaway which escaped less than 10km into the 160km stage from Invercargill to Lumsden.
Despite cross and headwinds which were among the most challenging seen on the tour in recent years, the group of van Uden, Marc Ryan, Nick Miller, Frank Sutton and Dunedin's Joe Chapman were able to defy the peloton, stretching their lead out past seven minutes.
After Sutton and Chapman dropped back either side of Nightcaps, Miller also fell away after securing enough points to claim the King of the Mountains jersey. That left van Uden and Ryan to try to take their attack through to its conclusion.
''We were doing 20kmh into the headwinds for a very long time. It was absolutely horrible,'' van Uden said.
''This is one of the hardest days I've had on a bike. It's right up there with elite nationals. The group started to disintegrate slowly after about 80km and it was just Marc and I left with about 40km to go. The headwind into Mossburn probably took us an hour; it was brutal.''
The breakaway pair knew that if they could get to Mossburn and turn with the howling tailwind they should be able to stay away over the final 20km.
''That was the goal - just get to Mossburn. I figured it was hell back in the peloton too, and it sounds like it was. We knew they wouldn't be able to make too many gains with the tailwind. Marc is so strong; I wouldn't have made it without him.''
With more challenging weather forecast for today's second stage finishing on Bluff Hill, van Uden was preparing for more pain.
''It's going to be the same with probably a lot more directional change. We had 100km of headwind today and tomorrow it will move around a bit. That road out of Invercargill to Bluff is going to be hell.''
''The team is pretty tired, but I'd imagine the whole peloton is pretty tired.''
Hamilton's Ryan Christensen leads the under-23 classification, with Brent Allnut, of Christchurch, holding the silver jersey for riders 40 years and over.
Overall, van Uden has a 9sec lead over Ryan, with Eric Marcotte in third on 1min 42sec back.
Dunedin's Brad Evans is sixth, just over two minutes behind van Uden.
