They controlled the final stage of racing at the Tour Down Under with panache, even sending Cam Meyer up the road in the final 10km, briefly threatening to derail the sprint trains, and thus ensured that Gerrans remained in front of Valverde on the overall.  

Cam’s heroics aside, the sprinters did have the final say for the week in South Australia, and Greipel did what Greipel does best.  He monstered the field with a dominant sprinting display.  One can only hope that he can take some of that form to European races where he can go head to head with Cav and Ty Farrar and we get to see kickarse sprint battles between the three of them and Gossy.

February is a quiet month as far as the World Tour calendar is concerned, with the next race that points are available being Paris-Nice in March.  There are other races, such as Qatar & Oman on, as well as Langkawi, but this is a period where teams will be scrabbling around a little looking for places to race their riders, and riders will be trying to get the necessary miles in their legs to prep for the Spring Classics while staying healthy and not falling off in the sketchy conditions that Europe in February can throw at them.

My second year at Garmin was a shocker for exactly this in February – we had fractured collarbones, ribs and even shoulder blades to deal with on top of regular ailments like colds and flu.  The gods didn’t smile on us that year, let’s hope they’re smiling on the peloton this time around.

Today the traditional break went up the road, and things settled into a nice rhythm, and most were likely preparing mentally for the two ascents of Wilunga Hill at the end of the stage.  Unfortunately for those not in good position earlier in the stage than said hills, some hefty crosswinds and aggressive bike racing split the bunch into pieces, with a couple of those expected to feature late in the race winnowed out prior to even making the climb.

Once the peloton hit the final circuit, the boys from Movistar particularly laid the heat down, with a little help form GreenEdge, Sky & Radioshack, and so the bunch that hit Wilunga for the final climb was down to under thirty blokes.  The adage that the first to attack is the first to be dropped rang true with Danny Pate shooting off the front, then getting spat out the back of the group.  In the final 1500m it came down to Gerro from GreenEdge, Mick Rogers from Sky and Alejandro Valverde from Movistar.

Gerro & Valverde looked nothing like this upon finishing, although it was a great finish!

Dodge went, Gerro and Valverde waited… Gerro went for it and looked to have done enough, but Valverde stuck it out and Gerro came back to him, and then in a super cool side by side sprint (which you virtually never see) Valverde edged away from Gerro to take the win.

Now they sit on the same time, and Gerro has been credited with the race lead on account of some sort of countback.  I can only assume the conversation between the judges on the countback went something along the lines of “Give it to the Australian when at the Tour Down Under.”

There are still quite a number of seconds available in time bonuses tomorrow, and who will do what will depend on if the current official standings are ratified and confirmed.  If GreenEdge hold the race lead, they will send blokes up the road or let a break go so that the intermediate sprints can’t go to Valverde, and then they have to hope that Valverde doesn’t finish in the top three in the final kick.  The likelihood of him being on the podium for tomorrow’s stage are next to zero, but the GreenEdge boys won’t relax until the race is in their pockets.  And if Valverde does nab a second, the maths will all change.  Good times.

And can you even bet on Greipel winning again tomorrow?  He’s a red hot favourite on such a simple course as the final crit circuit through the streets of Adelaide!

My tips for the stage,

Greipel: 1

Petacchi: 2

Boassen Hagen: 3

Stage 5 is going to be the decisive stage of the race.  It finishes at the top of Wilunga Hill, and does a lap prior to that going over the hill as well.  The hill is not that tough from a world cycling perspective, but is hard enough to put gaps between the strong climbers and the rest of the field.  Most likely the two passes up the hill will be ridden at warp speed, as will the lap in between in an effort to put some time into the sprinters such as Heino Haussler and Bling Matthews who have remained a threat on GC.

As I noted yesterday, there are a couple of contenders with some serious pedigree:

Hesjedal is always good, and will be cranking out a massive gear at a low cadence, Jan Ullrich style, looking like he is not going as quick as everyone else, but grinding away from them all instead

Gerrans is in great form as shown from his nationals win.  He also can position himself well in the bunch, and is faster than all but the sprinters when it comes to a kick.  He is going to have massive local support up Wilunga as well.

Valverde is returned from his drugs ban and would not be a popular winner.  He was craven in how he dealt with being caught, behaving like a primary school child, denying everything despite overwhelming evidence.  That said, he is a great bike rider, and in good form, so will be hard to beat.

Lloyd showed he has good legs at nationals last week, but may not be quite fast enough to skip away for the win as the hill isn’t quite hard enough for him.

Ryder can go deep to win a race!

It’s going to be a huge final 30 or 40km of racing, and the last kick will be spectacular to say the least.

Heart before head in the tipping: Hesjedal just getting past Gerrans in a photo; Valverde third.

130km: do they even need a feed? In this weather, I think yes!!

year?  I certainly hope so – the best races are built around rivalries, not processions.

Hearing the big man’s comments today on how his team was decimated (not literally (for the nerds reading this)) in the Stage 1 crash, perhaps Lotto allowing yesterday’s break to go wasn’t so much a bluff as a necessity.  We shall see if something similar to Stage 2 happens again tomorrow on Stage 4. The stage has the shape of a bunch sprint, is only 130km long, and going on form, how could anyone bet against Greipel doing it all again tomorrow?

The winner of the whole race will likely be decided on Willunga Hill the following day.  We have had Valverde letting everyone know he is in good nick, Gerrans showing he has good legs with his nationals win last week, Rogers and Hesjedal being the class acts they are and Sanchez being the gun ready to explode.  It is highly unlikely the sprinters will get a chance at the overall, and so tomorrow they won’t leave anything in the tank.  Makes for good bike racing!!

One can only guess as to what was happening, but it wouldn’t be surprising if Lotto attempted to bluff GreenEdge into sharing responsibility for controlling the break, and GreenEdge calling said bluff.  This would be a good call by GreenEdge as all they would end up doing is setting themselves up to be de facto race controllers from now on.  Far from ideal for them, and in the end, their man Simon Gerrans has again positioned himself nicely to be ready to factor in the final gc standings.  Interestingly, Mark Renshaw is out of gc contention, meaning Bling Matthews and LL Sanchez are now their main cards; and Valverde has shown he is in decent form by putting his Movistar lads on the front late yesterday.  Willunga will be interesting.

Today’s stage to Victor Harbour will again be a bunch sprint similar to Stage One.  Greipel to redeem his team and himself with another win.

Heat is the main thing making life difficult for the racers

And so they’re off!  Once again Andre Greipel has won a stage at the TDU, once again there is a bit of controversy about sprinters not holding their line, and once again the accused sprinter has taken the classic “WHAT! ME???” stance.  The season is underway.

Yesterday’s stage was typically nervous for a season opener, and was made difficult by the fact that it was such a hot day on the road.  This race and Qatar are the only opportunities that teams have to practise any thermoregulation theories on their riders prior to the Grand Tours in May and July, and I would be interested to know who is doing what and how they’re doing it this year! 

An interesting observation from yesterday’s stage was that GreenEDGE were essentially left to control the race prior to the other sprint teams contributing to bringing the break back in.  Similar to Rabobank at the Eneco Tour, the stakes are that much higher for the home nation’s team to perform that they are obliged to do more work than would be normal on more neutral ground.  Whitey of course played things well, ensuring that his boys didn’t do too much work, and that the other sprint teams put their share of effort in to drag things back together when the time came to set up the stage.

It was also hilarious to see commentators noting that an Australian team were chasing an Australian rider (not from their team) when GreenEDGE were involved in chasing Rohan Dennis in the final kilometres of the stage.  Errmmm… this is proFESSional cycling… you may have heard of it before… the TEAMS try and win races for themSELVES… strange concept, I know!!  I can’t imagine a scenario where Garmin WOULDN’T ride if they thought they were a chance of winning a stage if an American from another team was up the road.  Ludicrous!

Sadly for GreenEDGE though, all but Simon Gerrans appeared to be caught behind a late crash, meaning their GC policy is Gerro or bust.  Not at all a bad option!  They will still shoot for stage wins as they’re able, but will now concentrate on getting Gerro in the correct position on the two key days.

Today’s stage is an interesting one.  The Stirling finish circuit is a mainstay of the TDU, and it is a long uphill drag to the line which has seen opportunists leap from the front of the bunch to take honours, as well as strong man sprints over the past couple of years.  It was my first racing stage where I saw firsthand how tough pro cyclists can be: Cam Meyer as a skinny little neopro dislocated his shoulder in a crash over a waterbottle that another rider had dropped going through the feed zone and rather than laying on the ground whimpering like most of us would, Cam stood up, relocated his shoulder himself, got back on the bike and started chasing back on.  Hard man.

What with this year including a hilltop finish at Willunga later in the race, there is no way that an out and out sprinter can win the overall title this year, and this may take some of the motivation for the quick fellas to still be in the mix for today’s finale as well.  My belief is that there will be a strong man breaking off the front of a small peloton in the final two or three km who will hold on to win.  Let’s wait and see!!

We’ve had the little teaser of a crit race around a park on the edge of Adelaide’s CBD, which Andre Greipel emphatically dominated, we’ve had head knocks and called cops for GreenEDGE riders.  It’s sad to see GreenEDGE already having to deal with negative press, but that seems to be the Australian way: tall poppies beware.  Now we get past the rubbish and see some proper bike racing!

Stage One is going to be a bunch sprint. 

Gossy wins a TDU bunchy

It’s a hot day in Radelaide (37 degrees), and the profile looks bumpy, but this won’t be enough to trouble anyone.  An unthreatening break will be allowed to head up the road, the teams with sprinters will control things, and on the faintly downhill final 3km, the lads will be travelling at warp speed with leadout trains going head to head for the first time.  Andre Greipel is probably the fastest sprinter in the world in situations where it isn’t too technical coming into the (preferably) flat or faintly downhill finale, and so it’s hard to see him losing today.  That said, Gossy for GreenEDGE, Renshaw for Rabobank, Petacchi for Lampre & Eddie the Boss for SKY will all be doing their best to knock the big Gorilla off. 

My pick: Greipel from Goss, with Renshaw 3rd.

The Tour Down Under is one of the easiest races of the year for a pro cycling staff member… once you actually arrive!  The logistics of shifting all of the kit necessary to support a team through a week-long stage race across the world is daunting and expensive, and it’s almost like the race organisers then make everything else simple to make up for this

Ignore the goose in the foreground. Note how handy everything is!

.

Teams stay in the one hotel (the Hilton – niiiice), have a large, air conditioned space for the mechanics to work in just across the street, are placed directly above a supermarket so soigneurs don’t have to travel far to stock up their boys, and there are police escorts to the start of each race taking the stress of planning departures and routes away from directors and drivers.

The catch is that it is not a great race to prepare for the Spring Classics for exactly the same reason – it is too easy.  Stages are rarely longer than 160km, and when you are preparing for races in 4-8wks time that are over 250km in a day, this is exactly the wrong time to only be riding 150km.  Hence very few of the Classics big hitters are at the race.  This is one of the reasons why we see no Cav, Cancellara, Gilbert, Hushovd or Farrar on the start-line.

This is going to be a good week of racing though – the organisers have finally put in a hilltop finish, meaning that it will most likely be decided by more than just bonus seconds in sprints (although Cam Meyer barely bucked that trend last year having won a stage in a break and held off challenges from the sprinters).

Who will win?  It’s hard to see Andre Greipel not continuing to pick up stages – he has been a dominant force in Adelaide over the years.  Matt Goss and GreenEDGE will be desperate to pick up a win or two, and on the hilltop finish blokes such as Cam Meyer, Simon Gerrans, Mick Rogers, Edvald Boassen Hagen and Alessandro Ballan could pinch the stage and possibly the overall win for the race.

I’m massively looking forward to it.

2012 is here and I’ve managed to get a blog post going in the first week of the year.  Two New Years resolutions in one: get a blog post a fortnight out there, and at least make it past January 10th prior to failing at keeping to all resolutions.  BOOM.  And now, into the opinion posting:

To an outside observer, an Australian based cycling team has come about after many years of grumbling about something needing to be done; one year of huge, unfulfillable (and unfulfilled) promises by a rival consortium; and a year of consistent preparation and sound management by the GreenEDGE team.

It is a very exciting development for Australian cycling, and despite an abysmal website www.greenedgecycling.com/ (as a tip: leaving hints as to who your riders and staff are isn’t a bad idea for content on the worldwide interwebs), these guys are joining Team SKY in bringing a very modern edge to the sport.  There is talk of a great Youtube presence very soon indeed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhCXPcB8g2k

Now, after all of the speculation as to who is and who isn’t signing, and what the expectations should be, we get to see them start racing.  National roads this weekend will be a very interesting prospect as the team itself has (rightfully) stated that they should dominate.  In a similar vein to Rabobank racing at the Dutch nationals, GreenEDGE have such a huge number of riders in the race compared to the rest of the field that they can control proceedings with ease.  They can conceivably have six protected riders and put ten other blokes on the front.  Ouch!

SKY boasts CJ Sutton, Richie Porte, Mick Rogers and Matty Hayman, which is a lot of talent, and they have the potential to spoil the GreenEDGE party, as do the fast men from Rabo: Michael “Bling” Matthews, Mark Renshaw and Graeme Brown.  Bling is particularly rapid, and has that elusive “winningness” that is pure gold in an athlete.  Whether they are riding for Bling or Renshaw remains to be seen.  There are a couple of other pros who could also be in the mix: Heino Haussler for Garmin being another major threat, but at the end of the day, this is a race for GreenEDGE to lose.  Welcome to the big time gentlemen!  I can’t wait to see how they go!!

My tips: Gerro to win the road race in a break, and Cam Meyer to just pip Richie Porte in the TT and hold on for another year in the national TT champion’s jersey.

The new light in my life & ready made excuse for slow bloggery

get my act together and at least attempt to begin more regular blog posts.  What better time to try and commit to spending more self time than just before one of the major upheavals of your life, where you’re guaranteed to have less time to do exactly that?? What could possibly go wrong here…

It has been months since the Road Worlds were run and won, but I’ve not written a peep about them.  Most remiss of me.

It’s now over a week since I started writing this post, and my beautiful wife has had our first beautiful baby, a boy named Albie.  Clearly my plans to post more have already been slowed down!

The Road Worlds 2011 experience was unique in that the two favoured teams were genuine “best of enemies.”

Historically Australia has considered Great Britain the great nemesis from a sporting point of view – we’ve always loved our battles with the Poms. Be it rugby, cricket, football or Olympic sports, Australians relish the chance to continue (and hopefully dominate) the rivalry, and the Brits do too.

From a cycling perspective, Australia has been the big brother over the past decade or two, with more pros in the peloton, more successes on the road, and better results on the track. However, in recent years (and largely thanks to Dave Brailsford), the tide has been turning. Slightly.

Team GB cleaned up at the Beijing Olympics, the UK is home to a very successful pro team in the World Tour peloton and has been for a couple of years now, the winningest rider of the past 3 seasons is a Pom,  and the number of British pros in the peloton and on podia has exploded recently.   And so the big boys of the Anglophone cycling world have suddenly had to come to terms with a global swing towards the Brits.

Couple this swing with three extra elements: firstly, the red hot favourite was a Brit and one of his only genuine rivals was an Aussie from the same trade team; secondly the two squads consisted largely of trade teammates, former teammates and/or friends; and thirdly the two teams shared the same hotel for the week. The stage was clearly set for a ripping week and a great race.

On the cross-pollination of the two teams: Cav & Gossy were the individual team leaders, and both rode for HTC Highroad. Millar was GB captain on the road, and Stuie O’Grady (one of Dave’s ushers at his wedding) was the Aussie captain on the road and a former teammate at Cofidis. Millar was also currently teammates with Heinrich Haussler, and formerly teammates with CJ Sutton. Fnally, Team Sky had 6 men riding for GB, and 4 for Australia. Interrelated much? And that’s just the riders!

Me fitting in with the Copenhagen locals

At the hotel, there was a cordial atmosphere throughout the week, although Australian eyebrows were raised with mutterings of class systems and snobby Poms when the elite GB riders sat on a separate table to their U23 and Junior kids. I guess it gives the youngsters something to aspire to: “Someday I’ll be able to ignore young riders in my team.” Or something. Stuie O’Grady arriving and shaking everyone in the team’s hand was the proper way a man should behave we all thought.

Race day for the TT boys was a few days earlier, and both the Aussies and Team GB had good days, with Wiggo spectacularly taking the silver medal for GB, and JackyBobby pinching 5th in his first senior length TT. Both brilliant rides in their own respects. Richie Porte brought it home for 6th for the Aussies, thus qualifying Australia for two places in the TT at the Olympics next year, whilst Dave Millar finished in 7th. Great performances from all involved.

Race day approached, and looking back I am impressed at how cannily Millar played the mind games leading in to the show: a rumour leaked here, a tweet there, and our talk wasn’t on what we were doing, but on them. Chapeau Dave! Despite this, plans were made, and team strategy set out to throw everything at Cav and Team GB to try and unsettle the almost inevitable bunch sprint.

Whilst Australia had Plan A of Gossy sprinting, there were various fallback plans to try and cover other eventualities, such as Stuey and Gerro being ready to cover and get in any breaks, and so on and so forth. Team GB clearly had one plan and one plan only: set up a sprint for Cav.

As the race unfolded GB went straight to the front as if they were a team riding the final stage of the Tour holding the Yellow Jersey. It was bold stuff for such a long race, although considering how strong a favourite Cav was, it made sense that they would attempt to control any breaks that got clear early,  and ensure they could deliver their man to the business end of the day with something to sprint for. Millar told me afterwards that some of the boys in their team even questioned the wisdom of committing so early, but he insisted, the boys did indeed commit, and they were genuinely magnificent.

The Aussies, Belgians and French threw attacks, attempted breaks, rival sprint trains and everything else they could at the Brits, and it was all absorbed and shut down with the likelihood of a bunch sprint finale becoming more and more of a foregone conclusion as the laps and kilometres ticked by. In the final show, Gossy received a great lead-out from Team Australia newbie Heino Haussler, but was just checked the slightest bit as he tried to launch. Cav squeezed through a tiny gap and headed for home, holding Gossy off by half a wheel. This main event was atop a magnificently courageous attack by Fabian Cancellara a long way out that Cav & Gossy only overhauled very late (and barely at all by Andre Greipel for the bronze).

I didn’t have the chance to see any of this as I was awaiting the riders’ arrival beyond the finish line and couldn’t see a thing that was happening. The American commentator (who was truly hilarious and an excellent part of the day’s action) was bellowing about Cav and Cancellara, and so I wasn’t even sure where Gossy came until a little later in the piece.

Gossy’s original reaction was of disappointment at being beaten, but he quickly realised that he had ridden brilliantly, and was beaten by the sprinter of his generation by less than a wheel. Both teams performed excellently, with the Brits deserving all of the praise that they have received, and the Aussies not making any mistakes, just being beaten by a better outfit on the day.

The end to the championships was fittingly at a bar in a restaurant recommended by a guy who knew a friend who owed a favour to a guy who was a massive fan of Dave Millar’s. It was pretty cool. The two teams shared drinks, stories and laughs at the end of a super hard-fought race. Great sport, and a great week.

Token Copenhagen photo