The Coffee Ride #172, with Reece Homfray
ROHAN Dennis banged up but back on his bike, Cam Meyer described as like ‘different guy’ in his return to the WorldTour and all eyes on track nats in Brisbane in this week’s column.
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DENNIS BANGED UP BUT BACK ON HIS BIKE
ROHAN Dennis was bandaged up and back on his bike yesterday after crashing out of the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race at 50km/h on Sunday.
The 27-year-old was lucky to avoid any broken bones but suffered nasty skin grazing when he was spent sprawling while he handing a biddon to a teammate with 40km to go.
Yesterday he did a two-hour ride up Greenhill Road with his left knee, hip, elbow, fingers, waist and shoulder, as well as right elbow and shoulder all bandaged up.
He also needed new shoes after the bitumen burnt a hole in one and snapped the other just behind the cleat in the crash.
“I went to the chiro on Monday and got my body realigned,” Dennis said.
“And I felt really good today, the first two to three minutes was hard and with all my wounds I had that really intense itchy, stinging feeling.
“But I went up Greenhill Road and tried to enjoy the climb and actually felt pretty good at the end of it.”
Cheers @MichaelMorkov I never liked having all my skin👌ðŸ½#getyoureyeschecked
— Rohan Dennis (@RohanDennis) January 28, 2018
The crash happened after contact with Michael Morkov and Dennis failed to finish the 164km race which was won by Jay McCarthy.
“I went back to the car, got a Coke and a heap of bottles and went to give a bottle to Gerro but he didn’t need it,” Dennis said.
“Tom Bohli did so I went to give it to him and next minute I felt a shove from my left and I was on my a***.
“As I was sliding all I was thinking was ‘I’ve got the wedding in two weeks’, then I thought ‘s*** someone is going to hit me’ and that’s when I rolled a little bit and got my right side as well.
“That’s just the way it is with the sport but there are no broken bones and I’ve got three days of four hours then easy Saturday and five hours on Sunday.”
COMEBACK CAM A ‘DIFFERENT GUY’
CAMERON Meyer has returned to professional cycling a “different guy” according to his team boss at Mitchelton-Scott who has revealed his plans for the track world champion this year.
Meyer, 30, is in his second stint with the Australian team after joining Dimension Data in 2016 then walking away from the sport for six months.
He returned to cycling to pursue his track ambitions which he is now combining with a pro road contract with Mitchelton-Scott, and played an important role in Daryl Impey’s Tour Down Under win this month.
“Cam’s a different guy, that break he had from the sport it was only a few months but whatever happened he’s come back with a different passion and different drive,” Mitchelton-Scott director Matt White said.
“I think being able to chase that Olympic gold medal in Tokyo in a couple of years has been a big factor in that but he has always had that ability on the road, you saw him win the race (TDU) seven years ago and I’m a big fan of Cam otherwise he wouldn’t be back on the team.
“He’s a guy who performs under pressure, he’s won seven or eight world titles and I know I can rely on him.
“He’s realistic in what he wants to do in road cycling now and that fits well with what we want to achieve.”
Meyer will race this week’s Herald Sun Tour, which he won in 2015, before going back to the velodrome for the track world championships and Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
White said he would then head to Europe to race the Tour of Romandie.
“I think we’ll see a lot of him, after the Sun Tour he does the worlds and Commonwealth Games and we get him back in April,” White said.
“He’s not doing a Grand Tour but he’s down for Romandie and either the Dauphine or Switzerland.
“We made a few good purchases over the winter but getting Cam back on board will really help us, especially through parts of the year where we’ll be stretched with numbers and I know what I can get from Cam.”
GARFOOT STEPPING ONTO THE BOARDS
KATRIN Garfoot can count the number of times she’s ridden on a velodrome on one hand but this week will line up in the national track championships where anything is possible.
One of Australia’s top female road cyclists, Garfoot will race the women’s Herald Sun Tour in Melbourne before heading to Brisbane to race on the boards for the first time.
The 36-year-old is entered to ride the team pursuit with Queensland and “probably” individual pursuit as well.
“I had my fifth track session yesterday,” Garfoot said.
“The first time ever was at a (national) selection camp in 2013 with Martin Barras in Sydney, we did a bit of TP work and riding on track bikes. Then I wasn’t back on until November last year.”
Having walked away from a professional road contract with Mitchelton-Scott to remain in Australia this year, Garfoot’s major goal is the Commonwealth Games road time trial in April.
While she says racing on the track is “just for fun”, it may form part of her longer-term plans.
“Of course I’ll be hurting, I wouldn’t hurt as much on the road bike, it’s a more intense effort but it’s just for fun now,” she said.
“It’s a bit different, it’s still a bike and I mean I do a lot of track training on the Gold Coast but it’s nothing like that, it’s an outdoor track.
“The pacing is fine, it’s just we’ve only had one training session as a team, so riding in a team and being smooth is different to riding by yourself.”
DON’T TAKE ME TOO SERIOUSLY: SAGAN
PETER Sagan’s impact at the Tour Down Under could not have been bigger after the three-time world champion won the People’s Choice Classic and Stage 4 in Uraidla.
Sagan fulfilled his media commitments and spent time with fans who waited hours for his signature or a photo before and after the stages.
He also showed off his new tattoo which he had done in the off-season, of his face on an image of the Joker from ‘Batman The Dark Knight’ with the words ‘why so serious’.
At his press conference during the TDU, Sagan explained why he had it done on the right side of his abdomen.
“Now we have all the photos and pictures of every day, it’s nice to have something with you to communicate to the people,” Sagan said.
“With my friends we did a lot of tattoos, all my friends did some, and it was also on me I had to do something.
“That’s the impression of me ‘why so serious?’, it (cycling) could be (a serious sport) but you can have fun because when you lose the fun then everything is going down.”
950KM ROAD TO TRACK TITLES
THEY train for an event that lasts just 4km but in the past two weeks track world champions Sam Welsford and Alex Porter have conquered 950km in the WorldTour peloton.
The trackies ditched the velodrome for the road after getting a last-minute call-up to ride the Tour Down Under and Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race with the national team.
Given just a week to prepare for the biggest and toughest race of their lives, the pair dug deep in the heat and showed enough to suggest a road career beckons after the velodrome.
“Seven days before the TDU they said ‘hey Sam, you’re doing it, pin a number on’,” Welsford said.
“I was doing some last minute cram k’s but it’s part of the sport because you never know when you’re going to get the call-up.
“I’ve dreamt about doing the race so I wouldn’t say no even if I was on worse form, you’ve got to take these opportunities when they come because they might not come again.
“I was a little worried because I came from Tasmania and the crits so it was a different mindset to switch over to the longer, hilly stages.
“The last few days were just about surviving the heat and getting through to the crit.”
Both then found themselves in the breakaway during the 164km Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in 40C heat on Sunday.
Over run by cycling fans in Norwood with track world champion Alex Porter from UniSA ahead of Stage 4 of the #tdu2018 pic.twitter.com/iTf3gLYwEd
— Reece Homfray (@reecehomfray) January 18, 2018
But they hope it will be perfect preparation for the national track championships starting in Brisbane on Thursday.
“I reckon it will boost my endurance side of the racing, my IP (individual pursuit) and the points score in the back end where you might be a bit fatigued and hopefully with my power it will make me go event better in those bunch races,” Welsford said.
Welsford and Porter were both part of Australia’s gold medal-winning team pursuit at last year’s track world championships and hope to repeat that performance at the Commonwealth Games in April.
They can take another big step towards securing selection at the national titles this week where Welsford will be racing a range of events.
“All of us riders will go back to our states and ride within our teams, I’m not sure WA will field a team pursuit because we have a limited number of riders,” he said.
“You might even see me in a team sprint, third wheel trying to hang on, we’ll see how we go.”
His longer-term goal is the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics but beyond that Welsford would like to race on the road full-time.
“This (TDU) has opened my eyes to a bit more road stuff, I’ve always wanted to go to the road at the end of my track career, after Tokyo based on selection if I go and achieve my goals I’ll make the transfer over to the road.”
QUOTES OF THE WEEK ...
I was adamant in the team meeting that if I got over the climb, I would win.
— Chloe Hosking after winning the women’s Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.
My balcony at the hotel looks over the finish line so I knew coming in that if it was going to be a small kick (sprint finish) where I needed to go and I went there.
— Jay McCarthy reveals how his plan to win the men’s race in Geelong all came together.
I had a bit of a rough end to 2017 ... that’s been a blessing in disguise because it really motivated me to put down the road k’s and train really hard.
— Annette Edmondson after winning the Towards Zero Race Melbourne on the weekend.
Originally published as The Coffee Ride #172, with Reece Homfray