Howard made her presence known with several solo breaks during the one-hour Victoria Park Criterium stage, working hard to help out teammate Lauren Kitchen in her battle for an overall podium finish.

The Bathurst rider would settle for 28th place at the stage’s end, a result that saw Howard end up 37th overall of the 95 classified finishers.

Tuesday’s stage was taken out by The Netherlands’ Kirsten Wild (Cylance Pro Cycling) while Amanda Spratt (Orcia-Scott) was a dominant general classification winner.

Kitchen had to settle for fourth in the general classification, which was still a great result for Howard’s NSWIS teammate. Kitchen was also third place in the points race.

Howard was thrilled to be briefly dictating the terms during the final stage even though her team came up just shy of delivering Kitchen a top three overall finish.

“My plan was to make it as hard as I could for the others. Lauren enjoys a fast race and with my breaks the job was to make it just that,” she said.

“I definitely enjoyed racing in my role as a domestique. I felt proud to be out there doing the job for Lauren. Being able to get out to the front on a World Tour group was something that I didn’t think I could ever do, let alone making a breakaway.

“Lauren needed to get a couple of seconds on Kirsten Wild to get into third, but unfortunately for us she won the stage.

“It was such great fun to be a part of it all. It’s great to be working for a world-class athlete like Lauren and to have her thank you is very special.”

Thanks to Kitchen’s intermediate sprint victory – the last of the tour – the NSWIS team had their lead rider sitting in provisional third place in the GC, but Wild’s time bonus for the stage victory bumped her up into the bronze spot.

Meanwhile fellow Bathurst cyclist Mark Renshaw was unable to feature towards the head of Tuesday’s Tour Down Under stage one sprint.

Riders battled a headwind coming into the finish of the shortened 118 kilometre stage from Lyndoch to Unley, and it caught much of the peloton off guard.

Orica-Scott rider Caleb Ewan backed up his victory in the People’s Choice Classic with the stage one win, seeing off Danny van Poppel (Team Sky) and Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe) to the prize.

World champion Peter Sagan delivered a strong lead out for teammate Bennett but Ewan powered home along the left-side barriers for the win.

Renshaw was sixth on the turn for home but drifted back to finish 11th.