Cycling: Goss avoids chaos for prelude first

Matthew Goss provided a home winner of the criterium prelude to the Tour Down Under yesterday while Lance Armstrong started his last professional event outside the United States with a safe 68th-place finish.

Goss beat his compatriot and HTC Highroad team-mate Mark Renshaw by a second and Robbie McEwen of Armstrong's Team RadioShack produced a remarkable ride for third after being stopped by a crash 500 metres from the finish. The crash brought down last year's criterium winner Greg Henderson and disrupted tactical team rides that attempted to set up the race for sprinters Mark Cavendish and Andre Greipel of Germany, the 2010 Tour Down Under champion.

Goss and Renshaw avoided the chaos at the penultimate corner that split the high-class field.