Simon Gerrans plans to return for Tour Down Under

THREE-time Tour Down Under champion Simon Gerrans has confirmed he plans to return to Adelaide to race the event in January.

Tour de France - GreenEDGE - Australia's Simon Gerrans and Michael "Bling" Matthews get ready for the start of the Tour tomorrow in Utrecht. Photo Sarah Reed.

THREE-time Tour Down Under champion Simon Gerrans has confirmed he plans to return to Adelaide to race the event in January.

The Orica-GreenEDGE star missed this year’s domestic summer after breaking his collarbone while riding a mountain bike, but this week told advertiser.com.au he intends to race the national championships and TDU in 2016.

“I really hope so,” he said.

“That’s what the plan was this year — go back to defend my national title and Tour Down Under but it all went out the window with one mountain bike crash.

“But hopefully setbacks aside I’ll be on track to put in some good performances this summer.”

Gerrans will close his 2015 season which has been marred by injury and crashes at the final monument of the year — the Giro di Lombardia this Sunday.

Last weekend he finished sixth in the road race at the UCI world championships in Virginia, US, behind Slovakian winner Peter Sagan and Australian teammate Michael Matthews who was second.

After the race Matthews told reporters that he and Gerrans were sprinting against each other and he would have liked the support of the entire team.

But Gerrans said neither he or the Australian team had any regrets about two riders finishing in the top 10 and there was no animosity between he and Matthews.

“Michael was pretty adamant that he wanted sole leadership going into the race and following the race and not getting the result he was hoping for I think gave him reason to highlight that again,” Gerrans said.

“It’s always easy in hindsight but I don’t think there’s a lot we could have done differently.

“Sagan was clearly the best bike rider there and at the end of the day it was (coach Brad) McGee’s call how we were going to go about it and we debriefed afterwards and he said ‘you know what that was fantastic result, there’s not a lot we could have done differently, we went with the right approach’.

“Sagan was a class above, he really was.

“It wouldn’t matter what tactics we chose leadership wise — if anyone was good enough to chase Sagan down they were good enough to go with him and no one was good enough.

“He really was the next level above and I guess you could throw a blanket across a bunch of guys after that, it was all pretty close.

“The tactics we went in with and what we all agreed to at the start how we were going to approach the race, we followed that pretty well and there’s not a lot more we could have done.

“It obviously wasn’t the gold medal that we all hoped for but it was pretty satisfying at the end of the day.”

The 2016 Tour Down Under will be held from January 16-24.

[e-mail]

Originally published as Simon Gerrans plans to return for Tour Down Under