Adelaide cyclist Rohan Dennis - from Blackfriars Priory School to Tour de France yellow jersey
TOUR de France star Rohan Dennis was an Adelaide schoolboy when he received the letter that would change his life. Reece Homfray reports.
ROHAN Dennis was getting up at 4am five mornings a week to go to swimming training when he got a letter telling him he could be an elite cyclist.
So elite that on Saturday night (SA time) he won the first stage of the Tour De France with the fastest time trial ever. His hard work for so many years paid off. Big time.
The South Australian Sports Institute (SASI) had visited his school – Blackfriars Priory in Adelaide’s inner north – when he was just 15 and tested him for his compatibility to cycling.
Then came the letter that would change his life and see Dennis start riding a bike.
For a while, he was cycling in secret and his swimming coach didn’t even know about the extra training he was doing on top of 11 sessions a week in the pool.
“We agreed to let him do it, but really to only build up his legs for swimming,” Dennis’s father, Brenton, says.
“I was actually against it (cycling) at the beginning because he was such a good swimmer and was enjoying it.
“He was a really strong breaststroker and made the national age championships. But he went to Brisbane and was beaten convincingly and that’s when he made the switch to cycling full-time.”
Ten years later and on the other side of the world in Utrecht, The Netherlands, Dennis will tonight line up in the biggest bike race in the world – the Tour de France with the BMC Racing Team.
It’s not the first time he’s been to the sport’s holy grail. He was there in 2013 with former team Garmin-Sharp, but then just 23, he not surprisingly succumbed to the brutality of the race after eight stages.
But it’s a vastly different Dennis who returns to the Tour de France tonight.
He is older, stronger, tougher and, significantly, a world champion in the team time trial, a former world hour record holder and the reigning Tour Down Under champion.
“I’m definitely stronger physically and mentally,” Dennis told SAWeekend earlier this week.
“Having been through a Grand Tour – the Vuelta a Espana – last year has taught me a lot about the barriers I can go through to make it from start to finish in good physical shape.
“Riding the Tour de France is a huge honour as a professional cyclist. Being one of the races where the teams don’t pick the team until a week out means everybody is there for a reason.
“Sometimes I take it for granted being picked in the team, but it hits home when I hear of some 10-plus-year professionals who have never started.”
It’s hard to believe none of this would have happened had it not been for a chance testing day with SASI. “I’ve got the SASI Talent Identification Program to thank for my change of journey,” Dennis says.
“If it wasn’t for them I’d have never started cycling and would have never been in the situation to even reflect on an Olympic silver medal, world titles and world record. I do reflect back on these achievements, but at the same time it’s a hard thing to do. You can’t look at it as a closed book, you have to look at it as a way to improve confidence. The second you become content with what you’ve achieved is the day you’ll stop winning races,” he says,
Within two years of starting cycling, Dennis was the under-17 national time trial champion. He then turned his focus to the track where he became back-to-back junior world champion in the team pursuit in 2007 and 2008.
In 2010, he became senior world champion in the team pursuit and made his Olympic debut in London, 2012, where the Australian team pursuit squad won silver behind Great Britain.
From there, Dennis made the decision to focus entirely on road racing and his three seasons on the international circuit since have been nothing short of outstanding.
Major results include winning the 2013 Tour of Alberta, wearing the yellow jersey at the Criterium du Dauphine stage race in France (2013, 2015), regular top-five placings in individual time trials at WorldTour level, a silver medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, a world championship in the team time trial (2014), breaking the world hour record and winning the 2015 Tour Down Under.
But his journey has not been without sacrifices and although on the outside it may appear Dennis is living his dream riding his bike throughout Europe, reality is often very different.
“I believe ‘living the dream’ is used pretty loosely in cycling,” he says.
“It’s a great job and it is my dream job, but just like any job there are positives and negatives. Almost every day is hard and just as hard as when I was only starting to ride. I think what most people forget, is that just like any other job sometimes you just don’t want to go to the office but you have to.”
For Dennis, going to the office means hurting himself on the road, for hours every day and on good days and bad, but as he has already discovered, the pain is worth it for the glory.
Australians at 2015 Tour de France
Luke Durbridge (Orica-GreenEDGE)
Simon Gerrans (Orica-GreenEDGE)
Nathan Haas (Cannondale-Garmin)
Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEDGE)
Mark Renshaw (Etixx-QuickStep)
The 102nd Tour de France will run from July 4 to 26 and cover a total distance of 3,360km