Team Solway in touch with tour leaders

Team Solway Park were just 41 seconds off the pace in the team's event at the end of the first stage of the Trust House Cycle Classic yesterday raced around a 52km course at Avalon in Lower Hutt.
Four members of the Solway Park combination- locals Scott Lyttle and Edwin Crossling and Australians Richie Porte and Tim Walker- were part of the same team which finished runners-up to Trek-Zookeepers last year.The only new face is another Australia in Daniel Furmston.
On the individual classification leading into today's second stage- a 133.5km ride from Featherston to Masterton with a few "detours" in between- Porte placed 15th, Walker 27 th, Lyttle 37 th, Crossling 64 th and Furmston 67th- but all of them were within two minutes of criterium winner Gordon McCauley.
The Australians threw down the gauntlet at New Zealand teams after filling two podium places in yesterday's first stage.
Many of the potential winners sat back in a bunch in yesterday's hour-long criterium and they included defending champion Hayden Roulston of Trek Zookeepers, Australians Bernard Sulzberger of the Tabak team and Ben Johnson from FRF Couriers, and Jeremy Yates from Subway.
The opening stage was won by Trek Zookeepers' Gordon McCauley who edged out Australians Travis Meyer from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and David Pell from Savings and Loans in a sprint finish after sitting on the back of a four-man breakaway until the last lap.
"Last year, it was between us and Zookeepers but there are five or six teams this tour who (have) got really good bike riders," Pell told NZPA.
"We haven't seen a lot of the GC (general classification) guys show their hands.
"In the next couple of days I'm sure we are going to see them all.
"I think Saving and Loans are a stronger team than last year there is depth and strength to match the Zookeepers."
Pell rejected a suggestion that the 22 Australian riders in the 95-rider field would act in concert to stop Roulston from achieving a hat-trick of wins.
"There might be a little bit of national pride but we are all continental teams and race for our sponsors.
"We are looking to get a win for our Savings and Loans team so we'll be fighting as hard as we can against the Aussies and the New Zealanders so it'll all be fun and games," said Pell, who finished seventh in last year's tour.
Yates was also adamant his team would not be helping Trek Zookeepers keep their title if a concerted effort from the Australian riders emerged.
"I'd rather punch myself in the face than help Zookeepers win the race," said Yates, an apprentice builder, who is back in the saddle and aiming for Olympics selection after serving a two-year drugs ban which ended last year.
"I'm here for Subway and the Subway guys are here to work for me, so hopefully we can make it work."
Yates, 25, whose elder brother Matthew won the race in 2003, said the pressure was on Roulston this week as he sought a hat-trick of titles.
Australians such as Pell, Johnson and Sulzberger were past teammates of his .
"The New Zealand riders won't just be following Roulston or myself they will have lot more riders to follow and it will be a more honest bike race, a harder bike race," Yates said.
The Hawke's Bay rider said he hoped to race in the United States later in the year, get some good results and depending on the "powers that be" gain Olympics selection to be one of the two New Zealand support riders for Julian Dean.-NZPA