Alex Ray one ride away from Sprint title defense

Alex Ray hopes to be popping the champagne again after today's race ©Shane Goss – licoricegallery.com

Oct 9th, 11. NZ's Alex Ray has just today's Stage 10 left to successfully earn back to back Tour of Tasmania Sprint Champion titles.

Racing in Australia's Scody Cup stage race series, the 21 year old fastman has already secured two Most Aggressive titles, one Sprint title and earned one stage victory.

After a less than perfect start to the year, Ray told RoadCycling.co.nz he was very happy to be back delivering results.

Early in the season he raced in the UK for four months against top Euro Conti teams and at first found it a struggle just to finish the races.

"As the year progressed I really learned how to suffer. As the form began to build the racing became slightly more manageable which boosted the morale," he explained.

"It was a great experience, one I wasn't really prepared for but I was able to adapt and learn. Now I can take that back to smaller races and can hopefully have more of an impact in them."

Ray's form, and subsequently results, started to come together in the first Scody Cup race in late July.  At the Tour of Gippsland he won a stage and earned his first 'Most Aggressive rider' title.

"I have managed to stay pretty consistent since," he said.

In the ten stage Tour of Tasmania - won by NZ's Gordon McCauley last year - Ray has been leading the Sprint Classification for the past three stages and was named the Most Aggressive rider in two previous stages.  

He hopes to finish the tour with both titles after today's final stage - 12 laps of a 4.5km circuit.

"There are five sprint points and five KOM points, the climb is short but very steep! The General Classification is quite close, and with time available on the sprints the current tour leader could take the title off me if he won all of the sprints and I went for none.

"I plan to take one early to be safe, and then see what happens later on," he explained.

Having won the title last year, Ray was keen to look for opportunities to repeat the success.

"With a strong bunch of boys from Team Down Under supporting me, I couldn't let them down. They sacrificed their chances for mine. The tour has been close from the start in all classifications. It was just a matter of keeping at it and going deep when it counted," he said.

One of the riders at the top of the General Classification is NZ's Josh Atkins. After a season racing with the Trek Livestrong team in the US, the 19 year old is riding this tour with Jayco 2XU and he begins the final stage in 2nd place on GC, +12sec behind Nathan Haas (Genesys Wealth Advisers).

After this tour, Ray is looking forward to racing the PowerNet Tour of Southland where he says his plan is to," do as I am told". He hopes to have an opportunity to see how his sprinting is coming along, but only if that fits into the wider team goal.

"There are a few other races that are on the cards but I think there will be many coffee rides after a week down South!"