The Albury triathlete turned cyclist finished 63^rd overall, more than 30 minutes off the lead, after a nightmare stage one where he was caught up in a major crash on the Great Ocean Road.

He plans to take an indefinite break from the sport to overcome the physical and mental toll he experienced, after the highs of finishing 15^th last year in his first professional tour.

“I had my sights set pretty high after last year’s race and pretty much spent the whole year focusing on how I could be better and ways to get inside the top-five or top-10,” Featonby said.

“It all came to a crashing halt on the first day which was pretty frustrating.”

Featonby came off his bike at more than 60 km/h during the first stage and never fully recovered.

“Along the Great Ocean Road they were expecting pretty strong winds, so when the winds come from the side you don’t get the drafting effect,” he said.

“When you’re sitting behind a rider, you don’t get the same benefit as you would if the wind was coming just in front of you.

“The entire field of 100 was all on the one side of the road and I have no idea what happened, but a guy must have hit a wheel in front and he crashed, so whoever was behind him ran up the backside of the next rider.

“A world tour rider fell in front and I came up behind him.

“You can see the guy crashing in front of you and there’s literally nothing you can do about it, you’ve just got to duck your head and hope for the best.

“I stood up and my bike had snapped in half, so it was pretty frightening to see what damage it did, and how my body reacted over the next few days was pretty crazy.

“I’ve never felt so bad in a bike race, I had nothing.

“I don’t know if it was still trying to recover from the crash or it got belted up and my muscles weren’t working, but I just couldn’t get myself going.”

Featonby will look to recommence racing mid-year, but admitted it’s the last thing on his mind at the moment.

“I’m pretty keen to have a break and focus on other things in life,” he said.

“It will be good to take my mind off riding, but it’s kind of a shame because there’s some big races coming up that I would have loved to have used the Sun Tour as a platform for.”

Colombian Esteban Chaves took out the general classification by 26 seconds in a time of 18:34:09 from teammates Cameron Meyer and Damien Howson.