Australian cyclist Adam Hansen chases yet another Grand Tour

AUSTRALIAN cyclist Adam Hansen admits racing a Grand Tour is not healthy - and he has done three in five months.

Adam Hansen

ADAM Hansen admits racing a Grand Tour is not healthy.

Inevitably, at some point during the three weeks, his body starts to waste away, he becomes physically and mentally exhausted, and his immune system begins to lower its guard.

He loses around 3kg per Tour, which is significant for an athlete with very little body fat to start with.

And that's if he keeps his bike upright, because a crash means he's dealing with broken bones and gravel rash as well.

Then try doing it three times in five months by racing the Giro d'Italia in May, Tour de France in July and Vuelta a Espana in August.

To finish one Grand Tour a year is impressive. Two takes a big effort and three is almost out of this world, considering only 32 men are credited with ever doing it.

Hansen is among them, and last year he became just the second Australian to finish all three Grand Tours in a calendar year after Neil Stephens in 1992.

When the 32-year-old rolls up on the start line in Corsica tonight, it will be his fifth Grand Tour in a row.

"It's not a healthy thing to do because there's a lot of suffering and when you finish you need a good time to recover," Hansen told The Advertiser this week.

"It's very hard - three weeks of racing every day and you lose a lot of weight.

"It is difficult, definitely on the head because of the time away from home, and towards the end of the season you get tired.

"But I like Grand Tours. In one-day races everything is on the line for that one day, but in a Grand Tour if you don't get in the break you just try the next day."

Having ridden the Giro - and won a stage with Belgian team Lotto-Belisol in May - Hansen fully intends to repeat his 2012 heroics.

"I'd like to do it again. We race a lot and at the end of the season instead of doing lots of one-day and five-day stage races, it is nice to go to one race, do the whole thing and come home," he said.

"Normally the Giro and Tour is on my program and the Vuelta is up to me.

"It wasn't planned at the start (of last year), but when I finished the Tour I thought `okay, if I want to do it, that year is the year to try'."

Hansen is an adventurer at heart, which is what keeps him coming back for more.

You don't win the Crocodile Trophy - which claims to be the `hardest, longest and most adventurous mountain bike race in the world' - without a lot of guts and a sense of adventure.

Hansen won it twice, in 2004 and 2005.

"I like doing odd things or challenges," he said.

. . , I'is like a Grand Tour but you're away from everything."

nteHansen was born in Queensland but home for the past five years has been the small mountain village of Frydlant nad Ostravici in the Czech Republic, where his girlfriend is from.

It is a long way from the cycling communities of Varese, Monaco or Girona in western Europe, where most Australian professionals live, but Hansen loves it.

"It's beautiful. I'm in the mountains and it's very different to where the other pros stay but I like it here," he said.

"I like training on my own. I train very specifically and when you train in a group it's a bit harder to do your own intervals."

Since turning professional in 2007, Hansen has been a loyal and hardworking wingman for his team, which includes German star Andre Greipel. Yet he feared he may have developed a perception that he was becoming a domestique and nothing else.

That was until he broke through for his first Grand Tour stage victory in this year's Giro with a solo ride in the rain to the finish of Stage 7 to Pescara, which he described as "magical".

"Once you make the choice to become a domestique you think `this is where I'm at'," Hansen said.

"And to achieve something like winning a stage you think is out of reach or you don't have the opportunity because you always have to stay with your leader.

"I always like to push the limits and see what the body can do."

Starting on Saturday night, he is about to do it all again.