After a whirlwind tour with the under 23 national cycling squad, Dylan Sunderland is not slowing down. The local rider is taking on a one day professional race in Belgium today.
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Sunderland was thrilled to be part of the winning team in France’s Tour of Alsace at the end of last month, and said he learnt a lot from the experience.
“The first few stages of Alsace were very hard and fast, it is a very high level of racing with very strong teams,” he said.
“Racing within the national team was a good experience.”
Australia’s Lucas Hamilton took the overall lead of the race along with the King of the Mountain jersey and best young rider. Sunderland’s squad was also first in the teams classification.
“To play my part in helping the team was good for me to be able to show my strength as a rider,” he said.
Sunderland was most proud of his performance in the fourth stage where he had the chance to show off the climbing expertise he is known for.
“The four was the queen stage with 170km and 4300m elevation gain. My job was to make the race hard from the start and set the other guys in the team up to try and take the overall lead,” Sunderland said.
“I was really strong on this stage and was able to split the group down to 50 riders and set up to take the overall lead on the final climb.”