Despite avoiding a massive pile-up inside the final meters of the Tour Down under stage 4. to Mt Barker, the newly crowned Australian champion Heinrich Haussler once again missed out on a victory eventually finishing fourth, but believes that another chance will arrive on Sunday.

“The legs are good and once again not much was missing to get the win. But sprints in cycling will never be an exact science. Sunday I still have a good chance for victory.” Heinrich Haussler, who in the fourth stage of the Tour Down Under, took a strong 4th place behind stage winner Steele Von Hoff (UniSA).

Haussler however was not able to pull out a win with just two more stages remaining in the first WorldTour event of the season. The Australian Champion will not challenge for the overall classification in any case, while Rohan Dennis (BMC) maintained his lead.

Before riding back to his hotel with his teammates, Haussler expressed his appreciation for all the hard work the team has done for him already. “I’d really like to thank them because they have once again done everything possible to put me in the perfect position. The sprint was very tactical with a tail wind and a slight descent. After following Roger Kluge, I jumped on Meersman’s wheel on the right but the others managed to outflank us on the left. It’ll come together one of these days.”

Directeur sportif Kjell Carlström confirmed Haussler’s assessment, and made sure to stress the quality of the riders. “In this kind of arrival, you need a little bit of luck because all the guys are pretty close. The WorldTour level is really high. We still have everything staked on Heino and the guys rode to their limit for him in the final. It would have been hard to do better since we performed to our maximum. Given the route had a slightly downhill arrival, we even took the climb with a 55 tooth front ring.”

Very active in the final climb that came just two kilometers from the finish, Martin Elmiger spoke of the spirit prevailing within the group.

“It is going very well since the start of the race. We are united and are building a team. Just see what we have done today to bring Heino to a good position for the final sprint. The conditions are really great with temperatures of 25 degrees and luckily no one from our team was involved in the big crash that happened 300 meters from the line.”