Our sporting rivalry with the Brits is famous. The Ashes, on the track, the road…whenever we can, we go up to bat against the Mother Country in the hopes of returning home victorious.
So it seems odd that the Australian Olympic Committee has knowingly handicapped the Australian cycling team’s chances of a gold medal, in either the time trial or the road race. The road race course is billed as a sprinter’s course, and the best sprinter in the world is, of course, Britain’s Mark Cavendish. The race for second is always heated, but Australia’s Matt Goss is always up there giving it his best shot. The obvious choice for the road race would therefore be Goss, and the obvious choice to lead him out would be Mark Renshaw, billed as the best leadout man in the world – and conveniently Australian.
Well, the selectors got Goss right, but it seems to have somehow slipped their minds that Renshaw was available to take ‘Gossy’ to the finishing line. Renshaw was left out of the Australian World Championships team for 2011 as well, sparking speculation that Renshaw is being deliberately shunned. The 29-year-old is known for being a bit explosive and controversial – he was sent home from the 2010 Tour de France after a well-publicised headbutting incident with Kiwi Julian Dean. It has also been posited that Renshaw’s signing with the Dutch team Rabobank rather than the new Australian team Orica-GreenEDGE is the reason the sprinter has been left out of the Worlds and Olympic teams. Interestingly enough, of the five riders selected for the Olympic team, Stuart O’Grady, Matt Goss and Simon Gerrans all ride for Orica-GreenEDGE, Cadel Evans is the first Australian winner of the Tour de France, and Michael Rogers is an all-around Australian favourite. In saying that, almost half of the Australian pros are signed to GreenEDGE, so a certain amount of GreenEDGE-domination is to be expected.
But there’s another glaring omission in the Australian roster – and a GreenEDGE one at that. Luke Durbridge is the reigning Australian time trial champion, and in particular the only Australian to have beaten Bradley Wiggins in a time trial while Wiggins has been in his current brilliant form. 21-year-old Durbridge won the time trial prologue of the Critérium du Dauphiné just prior to the Tour de France ahead of riders like Wiggins, World Time Trial Champion Tony Martin, French National Time Trial Champion Sylvain Chavanel and, yes, Cadel Evans. Granted, Durbridge is young, but his time-trialling abilities speak for themselves, and he’s proven himself as a domestique throughout his debut season with GreenEDGE.
So why aren’t Renshaw and Durbridge on the team, then? In fact, why is there only one pure sprinter on the team – Gossy – when Australia boasts a pretty good arsenal of sprinters like Heinrich Haussler or Adam Hansen who could help Gossy give Mark Cavendish a run for his money? Australia’s team is simply not geared towards winning a gold medal; rather, each appointment to the team was a political move to pacify and acknowledge Australian cycling’s heads of state. It’s a noble intention, certainly, but someone needs to tell the AOC and Cycling Australia that the Olympic Games is the wrong place for playing politics.
Showing posts with label Heinrich Haussler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heinrich Haussler. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 July 2012
Sunday, 8 January 2012
The 2012 Australian National Championships - Elite Men's Road Race
Warm sun, a hint of rain and bagpipers under gum trees. It was classically Ballarat, and we couldn’t have had a better day for the Elite Men’s Road Race at the Australian National Road Race Championships.
The day’s action began long before the race. Riders began registering and signing on from around 11am, and astute fans packed the area by the start line to meet their heroes. GreenEDGE stars Stuart O’Grady and Matt Goss were heralded with cameras and autograph pens before making a graceful escape onto the track for their warm-ups, DS Matt White watching attentively nearby.
The journalists were also gearing up for the day. With a live broadcast of the race in the afternoon, the SBS broadcast van was already setting up for a busy Sunday, the day’s commentators, Phil Liggett and Matt Keenan, drifting quietly around the course.
It was extraordinarily exciting to see the peloton take off at the firing of the Sovereign Hill redcoat’s musket, ProTour team jerseys mixed in with local colours and the ever-present green of Australia’s own ProTour team of GreenEDGE. They raced away up the hill and around the corner towards the King of the Mountain banner, full of an enthusiasm that was destined to wane some time later.
Within a couple of laps the peloton had shrunk considerably, many of the local riders falling back on the hills. The European pros certainly weren’t being idle, with GreenEDGE’s Jack Bobridge launching an attack on the very first climb. Teammate Luke Durbridge and Garmin-Cervelo’s new recruit Nathan Haas were game to join, and they held off for a lap or two before the peloton came back. Then GreenEDGE team leader Stuart O’Grady decided to stretch his legs, and took former Leopard Trek teammate Will Clarke with him. Local boy Patrick Shaw put on a show for the hometown crowd and soon joined them. Garmin’s Heinrich Haussler didn’t like this scenario much, and put in the work that saw the break rejoined to the peloton.
By the fifth or sixth lap Mt. Buninyong, small though it was, had sorted the men from the boys and reduced the ‘peloton’ to a handful of riders chasing 20 or so big names that had gone off the front, never to return. Two or three laps later all the riders who would finish the race had migrated forward to join them, and soon enough the games began. Pat Shaw, Will Clarke (now riding for Team Champion System) and Luke Durbridge went on the attack again with new Rabobank sprinter Mark Renshaw and GreenEDGE’s Wes Sulzberger and Matt Wilson, and the six were soon joined by 2010 National Champion Cameron Meyer. Wilson and Meyer attacked and built themselves a lead of over a minute on their pursuers, before Wilson tired and dropped back after a lap. Then began the time trial that held the spectators spellbound.
Cam Meyer launched himself into a solo ride that lasted for 40 or 50 kilometres, building a gap of over two minutes back to the poursuivants of Heinrich Haussler and Luke Durbridge, and three minutes back to the main peloton. Back at the GreenEDGE tent, directeur sportif Matt White was instructing his riders in the peloton to keep the pace low to give Meyer’s stunning breakaway the best chance of success.
Of course, solo rides were not limited to the pro peloton. One of the spectators leaning on his bike near the King of the Mountain point had ridden from the eastern suburbs of Melbourne yesterday all the way to Ballarat just to watch today’s race. “It was hard,” he said with a grin of his 120-kilometre ride. But he immediately agreed that the effort was worth it to watch the top cyclists in Australia compete. “Oh, yes,” he said appreciatively as a few more riders made their way up Mt. Buninyong.
Back on the road, Meyer had an ‘explosion’, as he later described it, and was caught and later dropped by the peloton riding through. Simon Gerrans immediately took over the attack, Lampre-ISD’s Matt Lloyd and Sky’s Richie Porte following. Next it was the turn of Baden Cooke (GreenEDGE) and Will Clarke again, Richie Porte chasing that attack too. The attacks fading, the peloton regrouped as it hit the final two laps, but GreenEDGE was soon on the aggressive again, Stuey O’Grady leaping out the front, trailed by Sky’s Mathew Hayman. After the pair was pulled back into the fold on the climb, Matt Lloyd went again, Simon Gerrans following closely. The two pulled away, soon caught by the chasers of Porte and Bernie Sulzberger, while Baden Cooke and Garmin-Chipotle’s Steele von Hoff bridged the gap. It was another short-lived breakaway, and the 18 leading riders were back in a bunch as they began the crucial final 10-kilometre lap.
Team Sky’s four Australian riders appeared at the head of the peloton, suddenly looking very organised and very dangerous despite their small numbers. Though GreenEDGE started the race with 16, a number of those pulled out around halfway, including defending champion Jack Bobridge. The numbers were beginning to even up, but in the end neither of the big teams made the move. Matty Lloyd attacked on the final climb, Gerrans following him, and Porte chasing them both. Lloyd and Gerrans managed to keep around 30 seconds between themselves and Porte as they scooted around the final half of the course, the tension in the air palpable as 20,000 people watched to see how it would play out.
Ever a good time-trialler, Porte closed the gap on the leading pair and joined them with barely a kilometre left in the race. The three played coy with each other all the way down the final 500 metres, eyeing each other as they danced on their pedals, until Gerrans, tipped as the best sprinter of the trio, shot out from behind Lloyd and bolted across the line to win his first elite national title. The crowd, cheering ecstatically as Gerrans rode triumphantly past chased by a scrum of journalists, offered the same acclamation to the handful of riders trickling over the line to finish the race shortly after, including silver medallist Lloyd and bronze medallist Porte.
Gerrans' national title becomes the first victory on the GreenEDGE men’s team; the women opened their championships account on Thursday with two golds and a silver. With any luck this will be a propitious start to the season for Australia’s first home-grown ProTour team.
The day’s action began long before the race. Riders began registering and signing on from around 11am, and astute fans packed the area by the start line to meet their heroes. GreenEDGE stars Stuart O’Grady and Matt Goss were heralded with cameras and autograph pens before making a graceful escape onto the track for their warm-ups, DS Matt White watching attentively nearby.
The journalists were also gearing up for the day. With a live broadcast of the race in the afternoon, the SBS broadcast van was already setting up for a busy Sunday, the day’s commentators, Phil Liggett and Matt Keenan, drifting quietly around the course.
It was extraordinarily exciting to see the peloton take off at the firing of the Sovereign Hill redcoat’s musket, ProTour team jerseys mixed in with local colours and the ever-present green of Australia’s own ProTour team of GreenEDGE. They raced away up the hill and around the corner towards the King of the Mountain banner, full of an enthusiasm that was destined to wane some time later.
Within a couple of laps the peloton had shrunk considerably, many of the local riders falling back on the hills. The European pros certainly weren’t being idle, with GreenEDGE’s Jack Bobridge launching an attack on the very first climb. Teammate Luke Durbridge and Garmin-Cervelo’s new recruit Nathan Haas were game to join, and they held off for a lap or two before the peloton came back. Then GreenEDGE team leader Stuart O’Grady decided to stretch his legs, and took former Leopard Trek teammate Will Clarke with him. Local boy Patrick Shaw put on a show for the hometown crowd and soon joined them. Garmin’s Heinrich Haussler didn’t like this scenario much, and put in the work that saw the break rejoined to the peloton.
By the fifth or sixth lap Mt. Buninyong, small though it was, had sorted the men from the boys and reduced the ‘peloton’ to a handful of riders chasing 20 or so big names that had gone off the front, never to return. Two or three laps later all the riders who would finish the race had migrated forward to join them, and soon enough the games began. Pat Shaw, Will Clarke (now riding for Team Champion System) and Luke Durbridge went on the attack again with new Rabobank sprinter Mark Renshaw and GreenEDGE’s Wes Sulzberger and Matt Wilson, and the six were soon joined by 2010 National Champion Cameron Meyer. Wilson and Meyer attacked and built themselves a lead of over a minute on their pursuers, before Wilson tired and dropped back after a lap. Then began the time trial that held the spectators spellbound.
Cam Meyer launched himself into a solo ride that lasted for 40 or 50 kilometres, building a gap of over two minutes back to the poursuivants of Heinrich Haussler and Luke Durbridge, and three minutes back to the main peloton. Back at the GreenEDGE tent, directeur sportif Matt White was instructing his riders in the peloton to keep the pace low to give Meyer’s stunning breakaway the best chance of success.
Of course, solo rides were not limited to the pro peloton. One of the spectators leaning on his bike near the King of the Mountain point had ridden from the eastern suburbs of Melbourne yesterday all the way to Ballarat just to watch today’s race. “It was hard,” he said with a grin of his 120-kilometre ride. But he immediately agreed that the effort was worth it to watch the top cyclists in Australia compete. “Oh, yes,” he said appreciatively as a few more riders made their way up Mt. Buninyong.
Back on the road, Meyer had an ‘explosion’, as he later described it, and was caught and later dropped by the peloton riding through. Simon Gerrans immediately took over the attack, Lampre-ISD’s Matt Lloyd and Sky’s Richie Porte following. Next it was the turn of Baden Cooke (GreenEDGE) and Will Clarke again, Richie Porte chasing that attack too. The attacks fading, the peloton regrouped as it hit the final two laps, but GreenEDGE was soon on the aggressive again, Stuey O’Grady leaping out the front, trailed by Sky’s Mathew Hayman. After the pair was pulled back into the fold on the climb, Matt Lloyd went again, Simon Gerrans following closely. The two pulled away, soon caught by the chasers of Porte and Bernie Sulzberger, while Baden Cooke and Garmin-Chipotle’s Steele von Hoff bridged the gap. It was another short-lived breakaway, and the 18 leading riders were back in a bunch as they began the crucial final 10-kilometre lap.
Team Sky’s four Australian riders appeared at the head of the peloton, suddenly looking very organised and very dangerous despite their small numbers. Though GreenEDGE started the race with 16, a number of those pulled out around halfway, including defending champion Jack Bobridge. The numbers were beginning to even up, but in the end neither of the big teams made the move. Matty Lloyd attacked on the final climb, Gerrans following him, and Porte chasing them both. Lloyd and Gerrans managed to keep around 30 seconds between themselves and Porte as they scooted around the final half of the course, the tension in the air palpable as 20,000 people watched to see how it would play out.
Ever a good time-trialler, Porte closed the gap on the leading pair and joined them with barely a kilometre left in the race. The three played coy with each other all the way down the final 500 metres, eyeing each other as they danced on their pedals, until Gerrans, tipped as the best sprinter of the trio, shot out from behind Lloyd and bolted across the line to win his first elite national title. The crowd, cheering ecstatically as Gerrans rode triumphantly past chased by a scrum of journalists, offered the same acclamation to the handful of riders trickling over the line to finish the race shortly after, including silver medallist Lloyd and bronze medallist Porte.Gerrans' national title becomes the first victory on the GreenEDGE men’s team; the women opened their championships account on Thursday with two golds and a silver. With any luck this will be a propitious start to the season for Australia’s first home-grown ProTour team.
Friday, 28 October 2011
Jayco Herald Sun Tour - A Fangirl Perspective
The best part about having a crit-style final stage is that the riders treat it differently to a normal stage in a stage race. When your day's racing is 10 laps of the same circuit your warm-up seemingly doesn't need to be as intense as for six hours through small towns in country Victoria, because for until 10 minutes before the start of the race nearly all of the riders were relaxing in their team tents in the small square beside Lygon St and mingling with the fans.
Of course, for the true GreenEDGE fan-in-waiting, the number of Australian riders was brilliant. The number of ProTeams there was also pretty awesome. Needless to say, until such time as the racing started I was having the absolute time of my life running around amongst all the team and sponsor stalls, having my photo taken with every rider I could find.
Of course, for the true GreenEDGE fan-in-waiting, the number of Australian riders was brilliant. The number of ProTeams there was also pretty awesome. Needless to say, until such time as the racing started I was having the absolute time of my life running around amongst all the team and sponsor stalls, having my photo taken with every rider I could find.
But the fun didn't stop there. I found Cameron Wurf, who was an absolute darling with a lovely smile and quite happy to stop for a quick photo with me.
I also found Team Garmin's legendary Jack Bobridge, current Australian National Road Race Champion and former World Under-23 Road Race Champion, who recently broke the world record for the 4000m on the track by a full three seconds. Needless to say, he's also been signed to GreenEDGE next year.
Adam Hansen is, unfortunately, still riding for Omega Pharma-Quickstep, as it's now called, next year. Despite being a very popular rider when I found him he still had a big grin for the cameras.
Jonathan Cantwell rated a photo because he's Australian (though not WorldTour), but also as the winner of a crit in Ballarat last year. He beat both Meyers brothers, which annoyed me at the time chiefly because I'd never heard of Jonathan Cantwell. Can't say that anymore!
Naturally I eventually tracked down Nathan Haas, the rising star that shone brighter than all others at the JHST this year, taking home all bar two jerseys. The 22-year-old has been snaffled up for next year's pro season by none other than - guess who - Garmin-Cervelo, who seem to love snaffling up all the rising Aussie talents (until GreenEDGE snaffles them back, of course).
Steele von Hoff, who like Heinrich Haussler has an awesome European name but looks as ocker as can be, comfortably won the Tour of Gippsland and didn't mind me gatecrashing the 'we're waiting to go onstage and receive our jersey' boy's room to get a photo.
Taswegian Bernie Sulzberger is the older brother of ProTeam FDJ rider Wes Sulzberger. Had I been able to find Wes, I'd've asked him to pass along a message to Jeremy Roy from his Australian fans.
I got so excited when I saw this fellow's name on the start list. Marcel Kittel has ridden the Vuelta a Espana and won a stage this year - How to Win Fans and Excite Fangirls. Speaking of stage wins, he took out Stages 3 and 5 of the JHST too - as a cool-down from the Vuelta, I expect.
It wasn't just individual riders I found floating around, either. As a non-ProTour team and an international team, none of the cycling aficionados there had any idea who these boys were. As such the MTN Qhubeka were relaxing together in their tent and all jumped up and joined the circle when I asked for a photo. Second from the left is current Namibian road and time trial champion Loto Petrus, hence the unusual maillot.
Pat Shaw is a Ballarat boy and hometown hero, thus warranting a photo. But it's not our mutual origins that are the cause of our grins. No, we're laughing because Pat is hiding the GreenEDGE Cycling cap he stole off my head behind his back. No need to tell you which team he's NOT riding for next year, then.
I got so excited when I saw this fellow's name on the start list. Marcel Kittel has ridden the Vuelta a Espana and won a stage this year - How to Win Fans and Excite Fangirls. Speaking of stage wins, he took out Stages 3 and 5 of the JHST too - as a cool-down from the Vuelta, I expect.
Despite having a Russian best friend, I've rarely been so excited over anything Russian as when I saw this uniform riding around. A real-live ProTour team riding around with Tour de France vets? I was stoked, even though Giro, Vuelta and Tour rider Vladimir Isaichev was nowhere to be seen. I did, however, get the above photo taken with Nikolay Trusov on the left, and I was almost speechless to be in the presence of Egor Silin in the centre, who was on this year's Katusha team for the TdF. The Colossus on the right is, oddly enough for the pro-home-nation team, Belgian Stijn Vandenbergh.
I did ask if I could take the sign-on board home as a souvenir, but apparently Lord Mayor Robert Doyle got first dibs on behalf of the city of Melbourne. Sigh. The perks of power.
In the meantime, I was tracking down the SBS journos - Anthony Tan, SBS Cycling Central columnist and post-stage dissecter for the Tour de France.
Even cooler - Matt Keenan commentates the first half of each Tour de France stage, before Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen bring it home.
This familiar face first appeared to me in my press room at the Road World Championships in Geelong last year. Mike Tomalaris, fresh off the set of a live edition of SBS Cycling Central at the Jayco Herald Sun Tour. Is there a higher aspiration?
Saved the most special for last...that GreenEDGE Cycling cap goes remarkably well next to the fellow who's bankrolling the whole venture - Gerry Ryan, owner of Jayco Caravans, has promised funding for GreenEDGE for the next three years. Three years of sheer delight and excitement for me. He more than deserves a photo for that.
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