Sam Welsford and Ineos Grenadiers may not have got the win they were looking for on stage 1 of the Tour Down Under, but that perhaps made the victory when it came all the more sweet, especially when on the run into the line, hope was fading as the Australian found himself sitting well back in the bunch with teammates Michał Kwiatkowski and Ben Swift.
"At 2km to go, I was on Kiwa and Swifty, and we were like 80th wheel. And I was thinking, 'There's no chance'," Welsford told reporters after the stage.
"But Kiwa was just so, so calm and so experienced. He said, 'No, we'll be fine. We'll get there.' And then in my head, I was, like, 'How? How are we going to get there from here?'
"There was so much traffic in front of us, but he just has so much experience, and also Swifty in the end there, these guys just were amazing. They knew that it was going to be into a headwind sprint, so the pace would come off the front, and that's how we made our move."
Then, when Welsford was dropped off at the front of the bunch, there was no doubting for a second he would finish it off, sitting up as he crossed the line with a tidy margin to celebrate his first WorldTour win since throwing his arms in the air in South Australia a year ago and his first being lead out by his new teammates at Ineos Grenadiers.
"I think it just shows the, you know, the level of support you have in this team, and the level of support that these riders give everyone. It doesn't matter whoever puts their hand up, we back them 110%, and even when you don't believe you can probably win from there, they believe," said Welsford.
"To have those guys in your corner just means everything, and for me, if I look up and see Kwiatkowski and Swift, you know these guys have copious amounts of experience. To have a world champ in front of you, all you have to do is just turn the brain off and just follow them as much as you can."
It also wasn't just the experience of the riders in front of him, Welsford had on his side, with two-time race winner Daryl Impey in the team car focussed on the stage win opportunity presented by this 140.8km stage with a punchy climb 5km out from the line, which many had thought may dislodge Welsford.
The squad, Impey told Cyclingnews before the stage, had been out to check out the finish with the whole team, and he had also headed out another time with just Welsford, "so we've got a pretty good idea of what we want to do today".
And they got the result they were looking for after the sprint played out after the final man in the break, Enzo Paleni, was caught 500m before the line. Then, the dash for the line unfolded, delivering Welsford his seventh stage victory at the Tour Down Under, after he snared three apiece in the 2024 and 2025 editions.
"For me, this is one of my most special ones," said Welsford. "Coming off a really hard, hard year last year with injuries and broken bones, I lost a lot of self-belief.
"And also with the team last year, we didn't get a really nice last bit of the season with injuries and stuff as well. I lost a lot of opportunities as a sprinter. As a sprinter, you need that belief, you need that momentum, and I kind of lost my way a lot of last year.
"So for me to come here and win on a day that did probably didn't really suit me on paper – still a sprint, but the hardest sprint day – I'm really happy with that."
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