Great Ocean Road Race: Swiss cyclist Mauro Schmid wins men’s race for Aussie team Jayco-AlUla
The mercury went above 40 in the men’s Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, and it was an unlikely Swiss sensation who delivered glory for an Australian team in the sweltering heat.
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Swiss cyclist Mauro Schmid has fought off a chasing pack to win the men’s Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race and deliver glory for Australian team Jayco-AlUla.
In sweltering heat topping 40 degrees — a world away from his hometown of Bulach in Zurich which had a top of five degrees on Sunday — Schmid was 10 seconds ahead of a group of desperate competitors, including 2024 winner Laurence Pithie, but kept them at bay to bring up the biggest win of his career on Sunday afternoon.
New Zealander Pithie finished in third place in a strong defence while his countryman Aaron Gate was runner-up, with four Kiwis placing inside the top 10.
Schmid, 25 said learning from past mistakes in the gruelling race helped him secure the win.
“Two years ago I had a similar attack, didn’t work out well. I got caught with 300 to go, so that was the main thing I could take. So I just went super deep until one k to go because I knew the finishing straight wasn’t wasy,” Schmid told Channel 7 moments after his win.
“So that helped definitely.
“I knew I need to keep this 10 seconds for as long as possible and it worked out.
“I think the team helped me prepare this well. I came quite early to Australia. It was a big race for me, big race for the team so I’m super happy we could put some results together on the last day.”
Women’s Great Ocean Road Race: Olympic medallist pulls off Geelong double
Paris Olympic medallist Ally Wollaston has done the Geelong double, taking out the women’s Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in similar fashion to her Surf Coast Classic triumph on Wednesday.
The New Zealander’s sprint speed – which helped her nation to two medals at last year’s Olympics — came to the fore once again in a tight bunch sprint that saw her narrowly edge out Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ) and Noemi Ruegg (EF Education – Oatly) in the 142 kilometre race on Saturday.
The 24-year-old said disappointing results in South Australia to start the season fuelled her new team FDJ – Suez, who all played their part in the win.
“What a cool prize, it is amazing,’ Wollaston said.
“We made a few mistakes in South Australia and we didn’t get bad results but we just didn’t quite get the results that we wanted and took some really key learnings from there.
“I think it made us hungrier this week and I really felt that in the team, a real collective buy-in today. The same with the Surf Coast Classic, we were all really motivated and (Saturday) suited us really well as a team.
“It could have gone one of two ways. We could have taken it really badly and been fed up and pissed off about the result, but I think the team really took it in our stride. We had a really good debrief following that race and figure out what we need to work on and what went wrong.”
Wollaston was full of pride for her team, which she signed with in September, and said the race showed her versatility as a cyclist.
“I think the team have a lot of confidence in me but at the start of the year I knew this, on a good day, this is a really good race for me and I think I’ve tried really hard in previous years not to pigeon hole myself into being the sprinter and I think (this race) proves that I’m not just a sprinter,” Wollaston said.
“These girls are halfway across the world away from their families and you form a really tight knit bond and we have definitely done that over the last two weeks and it really shows in the results.”
SURF COAST CLASSIC MENS: Danish young gun upstages Aussie
Danish young gun Tobias Lund Andresen upstaged Aussie Sam Welsford and team Red Bull – BORA – hansgrohe, winning Thursday’s Men’s Surf Coast Classic bunch sprint.
Welsford settled for second as the hard and fast race which came down to the final 1km of the 157km point-to-point trek from Lorne to Torquay, with Germany’s Tim Torn Teutenberg of Lidl-Trek rounding out the podium.
“It means a lot to me, it’s the first one-day race win for me,” Andresen said post-win.
“I said before the season started, I wanted to win a one-day race so that’s already crossed off now.
“And it’s also important for a sprinter for the confidence to get a win on the board.”
Andresen, 22, earned the win for Dutch team Picnic PostNL, who he credited as the difference on the day.
“100 per cent … we really put pressure on Bora, they have the fastest guy here and also in the world, so it was good to get in front of them, they used up their whole team, so did we but they made me really save a lot of energy so I had just good enough legs for the finish,” he said.
A big split mid-race was eventually closed, though attacks continued to come thick and fast as little stuck, with Lund Andresen confident in his team and himself to make the right moves to keep together for the sprint.
Welsford, who dominated with three stage wins at the Tour Down Under this month, said it felt like ‘Bora against the world’ among the peloton starting with the split at the 62km mark.
“Took us about till 50km, 40km to go to bring that back and then as soon as we did that, we got attacked again,” Welsford, 29, said.
“It was a hard day for the team and I was pretty disappointed not to pay the boys back with the win, I might have waited to long in the sprint I think.”
Evans throws support behind reigning champ despite course difficulty
Cadel Evans believes Laurence Pithie is “in good shape” to become the first-ever back-to-back winner of the Great Ocean Road Race on Sunday, despite declaring the difficulty of consecutive wins on the gruelling 184km elite men’s course.
The 2011 Tour de France winner is also firmly in Aussie cyclist Amanda Spratt’s corner to take out Saturday’s 142km women’s road race, after the 37-year-old placed seventh in the Tour Down Under in South Australia earlier this month.
Evans said he had become a “fan” of Pithie’s after the New Zealander’s win in Geelong last year, which was described as the tightest finish in the race’s nine-year history after the 22-year-old held off Eritrea’s Natnael Tesfazion and Germany’s Georg Zimmermann in a photo finish on the line.
“He went on to have a fantastic season after his victory here last year,” Evans said of Pithie, who signed with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe at the end of 2024.
“I’d like to see him go back-to-back which would be the first time ever.
“But I think this race is a really hard one to go back-to-back on because it’s a lot of luck involved in the final, not just being good.
“I think Laurence is in good shape, and guys like French cyclist Bryan Coquard, who won a stage at South Australia last week, he’s a rider I’d be putting money on if I was a betting person.”
Evans is also expecting a number of riders to “try something” on the infamous 1km climb up Challambra Crescent, which the peloton ascends four times on their arrival back into Geelong.
“Whether they have enough gap on Challambra to get to the finish, I don’t know but what they can do is really make it hard on the sprinters behind and guys like Laurence,” he said.
SURF COAST CLASSIC WOMEN’S: Olympic medallist takes out crown
New Zealander Ally Wollaston put recent mental struggles on the bike behind her to take out the first-ever Women’s Surf Coast Classic for team FDJ-Suez.
The two-time Paris Olympic medallist came out on top in a bunch sprint ahead of American Chloe Dygert and Tasmanian Georgia Baker in Wednesday’s 118km point-to-point race from Lorne to Torquay.
Narrowly missing out on a stage win at last month’s Tour Down Under, Wollaston made the most of her chances in the midweek race, a precursor to the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.
“So nice, I think a bit of bad luck but also some bad decision making in South Australia made for some near misses off the podium but to come to away with the win today is really nice,” Wollaston, 24, said.
“I felt really strong today, I think in the last few races maybe I’ve struggled mentally to really stay present in the race and stay attentive and I guess be confident enough that I’m good enough to be there in the final and today as soon as I started climbing I knew I had a good shot at the win today.
“I felt really comfortable on the climb and my team was there the whole time.”
In what was a highly-controlled race which look destined to end in a bunch sprint with 20km left, Wollaston said she and her teammates will take confidence from the ride heading into Saturday’s women’s road race.
“I think we rode really well today and if we can do that again on Saturday, I think for sure we have a strong shot at a podium, or maybe even a win,” she said.
Cadel Evans’ grand plans for road race as event hits 10th year
Cadel Evans believes the race named in his honour can become a bigger player on the international cycling calendar as it celebrates its 10th edition this week.
Fourteen men’s and women’s elite teams arrived in the region this week, with the five-day event kicking off on Wednesday with the 118km women’s Surf Coast Classic ahead of this weekend’s major road races.
Also on the calendar is Friday’s Family ride, with 650 kids already registered, while Saturday’s People’s Ride is expected to sell out with 3000 entries.
The 2011 Tour de France winner’s last race before retirement in 2015 was the inaugural Cadel Evans Road Race, with the race later added to the UCI World Tour in 2017.
“Where did that 10 years go?” Evans said with a laugh.
“When we started the race we hoped to have a race for three years and to go beyond that, to be at 10, I feel we’re really getting established now in the peloton.
“And after 10 years I feel we’ve really become accepted by the region, whether that’s businesses or residents of Geelong and the surf coast which is really cool for me as this is our event to embrace and enjoy.
“But I’d also like to think, from here on in, we can still work to be a bigger part of international cycling calendar and a bigger race … that’s what I want to work to.”
Evans, 47, will be keeping a close eye on the talent in the lead-up to weekend’s 142kn women’s and 184km men's road races, which start and finish at Steampacket Gardens in Geelong, with last year’s men’s finish coming down to a matter of centimetres.
“The weekend, it’s always exciting, unpredictable racing, which is exactly what we designed the course to be,” he said.
“It normally comes down to a good thriller … you don’t know until they cross the line.”
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Originally published as Great Ocean Road Race: Swiss cyclist Mauro Schmid wins men’s race for Aussie team Jayco-AlUla
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