Extract taken from Roadbikerider.com
Garmin-Cervelo's Cameron Meyer won the Tour Down Under by 2 seconds over Matthew Goss of HTC-Highroad, equaling the closest ever finish at the UCI WorldTour's first race of the year. Ben Swift of Team Sky took third.
Lance Armstrong, in his last international race, finished well back, in 67th place.
The rider who suffered most, though, likely was HTC-Highroad sprinter Mark Cavendish. The Manx Missile practically exploded after a two-day stretch of monumentally bad luck. First, he wiped out on a gravel-strewn road in Stage Two, badly gashing his forehead and suffering serious road rash elsewhere.
On the next day's stage, as he limped along at the back of the peloton, he was passed by the "green light" vehicle, which is supposed to follow the last rider. Once it had passed him, the police opened up the road behind it. The 15-time Tour de France stage winner and the world's pre-eminent sprinter was left fuming as he breathed the fumes of the traffic he was forced to dodge to make it in before the cut-off time. For his troubles, he finished dead last in the Tour.
