The Coffee Ride #33 with Reece Homfray
AUSSIE cycling freshly brewed every Wednesday morning by Reece Homfray, exclusive to advertiser.com.au
AUSSIE CYCLING FRESHLY BREWED EVERY WEDNESDAY MORNING, EXCLUSIVE TO ADVERTISER.COM.AU
ULURU EPIC INSPIRES ANGUS TO PEDAL SERIOUSLY AGAIN
SOMEWHERE between Port Macquarie and Uluru, as he pedalled through the heat and dust next to his brother Lachlan who is a professional with Garmin-Sharp, Angus Morton knew this was what he wanted to be doing.
It’s not like he had never been a cyclist before, but four years ago with Drapac now seemed like a lifetime ago.
At the 2010 Tour of the Murray River he “hated” racing so much he was relieved to crash and break his collarbone because it meant he didn’t have to finish the tour.
So he racked his bike and as of late last year he could count on both hands the number of times he’d ridden it since.
He also had a job which he loves, working for the ABC as director of the Chaser program.
But still, the bike kept calling and when Lachlan returned to Australia for his pre-season and they decided to ride from Port Macquarie to Uluru and document their journey which they dubbed ‘Thereabouts’, the cycling flame began to flicker again.
He had so much fun filming and documenting their 2500km, 12-day cycling adventure he figured why not combine the two permanently?
“When we first started thinking about the ride I had no inkling, it was more of a way that we could both do what we wanted to do and still catch up because Lachlan has obligations to train,” Angus, 24, said.
“We came up with this idea of shooting some portraits and meeting some interesting people along the way.
“But as we started training and got on the road, my condition came back much faster than I thought and I enjoyed the physical element of it a lot.
“Then a little bit after that I thought ‘I’m going to give this a crack again’.”
As a junior, Angus won national time trial titles then had top-fives in nation’s cup events for under-23 riders in Europe and finished 17th overall in the 2008 Herald Sun Tour.
He had contract offers to take the next step in Europe but decided to give it away in October, 2010.
“I crashed in the Tour of the Murray River and broke my collarbone and it was one of those situations where I was hating it so much I was actually happy I had broken my collarbone because it meant I didn’t have to ride the last three days of the race,” Angus said.
“I’d had a few rough seasons with health and stuff and in that time I was studying film and after being a bike rider, which was all I thought about from the age of eight, I suddenly discovered this whole other world.”
Instead of riding, Angus got a job working for Andrew Denton’s production company and later with The Chaser.
“It’s challenging, fast paced and quite wacky but in the same way that sport is — it requires all of your attention and then you stop and look back and you can see exactly what it is you created.”
But having decided to return to competitive cycling, Angus' contract with the ABC finishes at the end of June and he will turn his attention to his new cycling team called ‘Pat’s Veg’ which includes Michael’s Drapac’s sons Damion and Pat.
Only this time, bike racing will be one part of his journey and the other will be documenting it along the way.
“We’re combining our love for cycling with our love for film and story telling,” Angus said.
“So if I am fortunate enough to become a competitive cyclist again it will always be with the idea of exploring and telling stories.
“I don’t think I’ll need to leave one or the other behind which is good.”
Ironically, his first race back will be the Tour of the Murray River almost four years to the day since he threw it all in.
“We’ve got a little team with Damion and Pat Drapac, they’ve been out of the sport for a while themselves and are starting to get back into it as well,” he said.
“We’ve got about eight guys who will do NRS stuff for the second half of the year.
“We’re trying to get some of the Walker boys back involved so it’s a bit of a comeback kids team.”
But first comes a month-long training camp in the US which will include ‘Thereabouts 2’ with Lachlan after he finishes the Criterium du Dauphine on the WorldTour.
Thereabouts 2 will start in Boulder, Colorado, in late June and take them 1000km in six days across the Rocky Mountains to Moab in Utah.
“It will be awesome,” Angus said.
“Lachlan will do the Dauphine then he’ll meet me and be super fit, then he’ll go and do the Tour of Utah and Tour of Colorado which are his two big goals for the season.
“I’ll train with him for a month, really intense leading up to the Tour of Murray River, so I’m aiming to do the next couple of months as well structured as I can, then aim towards the last few races of the (NRS) season.
“Doors will open up if I can prove I can be competitive ... I still know a lot of people in the cycling world and all those guys I grew up riding with are still around.
“This is a bit of an adventure. Before I came at it with a bit of desperation, I had no choice and had to do whatever it takes to be a pro.
“Where as now I’m coming at it from a broader perspective and I’m doing it because I want to do it and I enjoy the challenge.
“I want it to be a fulfilling challenge.”
Angus and Lachlan’s documentary on Therabouts 1 will be screened in Melbourne this Saturday night.
Where: A Bloc Bike Store, 118 Commercial Road, Prahan.
When: Saturday, May 31, 7pm.
WHITE HAILS HIS TEAM OF HEROES
ORICA-GreenEDGE director Matt White has hailed his entire team of heroes which has been whittled down to three riders for the final week of the Giro d’Italia.
Speaking to News Limited on the tour’s final rest day, White said the six who had gone home were just as tough as the three still remaining — Michael Hepburn, Ivan Santaromita and Svein Tuft.
After winning the opening teams time trial and holding the pink jersey for the first week, GreenEDGE has since lost Mitch Docker, Pieter Weening and Cameron Meyer to illness and Brett Lancaster, Luke Durbridge and Michael Matthews to injuries from crashes.
“It has been a huge effort by everyone and there is not a single guy who has gone home for any other reason than they had to,” White said.
“We had a virus that went through riders and staff and we’ve had broken bones.
“Everyone has given 100 per cent and people have given until they can’t give any more.
“And we’ve still been the most successful team here.
“There are teams here still with nine riders and haven’t done anything.
“The morale hasn’t changed, it’s normal to what you’d expect at this stage of a race.
“It’s just that our meetings are a bit shorter and there’s more of a family feel on the bus.”
CADEL THROWS THE KITCHEN SINK AT IT
AS WE wake on Wednesday morning there’s a fair chance the general classification has been shaken up again following a nasty 139km stage to Val Martello.
Cadel Evans was to start Stage 16 second overall, 1min 3secs behind leader Rigoberto Uran. And as much as I’d love to see him win it, I haven’t seen enough to convince me he’ll be able to drop Uran — or Nairo Quintana or Rafal Majka for that matter — to make up the lost time.
Yes, there are still five stages to go and one of them is an individual time trial but it’s going to take a mighty, mighty effort for Evans to win it from here.
But that said, isn’t just watching him fight for the title at the ripe old age of 37 half the fun and entertainment?
Evans has had so many glorious victories in his career, that images of him standing in yellow or rainbow are etched into my mind forever.
But what will remain equally as strong is his grit-your-teeth grimace, where you don’t know if he’s smiling or about to scream, sweat pouring off his face, necklace swinging madly from side to side, out of his saddle pain that he puts himself through when the heat is on in the mountains.
We saw it when he won the Tour de France in 2011, we saw it again last year when he struggled just to stay in touch with the yellow jersey and we’ve seen it again this week at the Giro.
Evans is a fighter and while the pink jersey might still be undecided, what isn’t in question is that this little Aussie battler will throw the kitchen sink at it.
KAARLE RE-LOADS FROM SYDNEY
FORMER world champion and Olympic bronze medallist Kaarle McCulloch has left the national program in Adelaide to re-launch her sprinting career in Sydney after a frustrating battle with injury.
The 26-year-old raced with Anna Meares in London in 2012 and together they won three team sprint world championships, but said she needed a fresh start back home in Sydney with new coach Sean Eadie at NSWIS.
McCulloch started full-time training in April after five months of rehabilitation to correct posture-related injury issues stemming from a crash in 2009.
“I had an unnatural rotation and bad posture as a result of a whiplash style injury where my ribs attached to my thoracic back,” McCulloch said.
“Over time that rotation caused problems down my left leg like knee and hip pain as I wasn’t standing or sitting straight. Essentially my rehab corrected the posture and stopped the rotation.”
McCulloch said she is “essentially rebuilding from zero” but remains motivated to get back to her best.
“Sean (Eadie) was the driving force behind me finally sorting my injury out and helping to write a recovery program,” she said.
“And four weeks into my training we are seeing some of my best training ever which is really promising considering the amount of time I was unable to do anything.
“It was a long and tedious process to fix this injury and it took a lot of time and effort from my team in NSW and support from my team mates so I am really thankful for all their help. It’s been almost 10 weeks now of no pain.”
But injuries weren’t the only reason for McCulloch leaving Adelaide as she conceded her gradual improvement on the bike was not progressing as she wanted.
While McCulloch struggled with injury, young South Australian Stephanie Morton emerged as a serious challenger for the title of Australia’s best female sprinter behind Meares, but is yet to partner Meares in a team sprint at a world titles after winning Paralympic gold as a pilot in 2012.
“I hadn’t improved to the level that I expected or wanted for the effort I was putting in for three years in Adelaide and I decided a change was in need,” McCulloch said.
“It’s great to be home with my family and working in an environment that is really seeing me thrive and regain some lost motivation from my injury and lack of results last year.
“I’m really excited about the future and think I made the best choice for my career and I hope to see the fruits of my hard work later this year.
“I really believe in Sean and he believes in me, my potential as an athlete and what I want to achieve and that belief is highly motivating for me.”
McCulloch will miss this year’s Commonwealth Games — in which she won gold with Meares in Delhi in 2010 — but will race in Adelaide as part of the international track series in the lead up to the national team leaving for Glasgow.
“Obviously because I will have only been training for eight weeks I’m not expecting much, and with the Comm Games athletes only a month out from the comp I would expect them to be in fine form,” McCulloch said.
“For me it’s about seeing where I am at in regards to my body holding up after the rehab and earning points in the sprint for the upcoming season.
“The Oceania Championships in Adelaide in October is where I am aiming to come out on fire.”
NOT SO LUCKY
THERE was plenty of talk last week about four-year-old bay gelding ‘Cadel’s Luck’ which looked good early then faded late to finish eight lengths last at Hawkesbury.
But don’t despair — thanks to our racing editor Lincoln Moore, he’s pointed out that there are two other horses with ‘Cadel’ in the name — Cadel’s Gold and Cadel Triomphe, which no prizes for guessing would be named after the great man’s day in yellow on the Arc de Triomphe in 2011.
VELO-CITY GLOBAL ADELAIDE
THE biggest international cycling planning conference in the world continues in Adelaide with a ‘big brekky ride’ from 7am in Victoria Square today.
Velo-city Global Adelaide 2014 has brought together more than 500 participants to hear from more than 150 guest speakers on how to create and sustain more cycling-friendly cities.
Cycling has been a hot topic in Adelaide in recent weeks following the construction of concrete slabs separating bikes and cars on the busy Frome Street in the CBD.
Among the presenters at this week’s conference is Melburnian Bojun Bjorkman-Chiswell who has just finished filming her documentary mini-series titled ‘The One Billion Bicycles Project’.
As part of the project, Bjorman-Chiswell travelled to 65 cities to investigate what the bicycle means to people around the world.
QUOTES OF THE WEEK ...
“This is some of the best racing I’ve seen for many years.”
- SBS commentator David McKenzie gets excited while calling the action live during Stage 15 of the Giro d’Italia.
“It’s always nice when you’re coming into the last few kilometres and contemplating the win like that, but you have still got to make it happen.”
- Australian young gun Luke Davison after claiming his first European victory in Omloop der Kempen in The Netherlands.
“I’ve got one gentleman in mind that I would like to start riding GC for us next year, we’ll find out in the next four or five weeks if that’s going to happen.”
- Orica-GreenEDGE director Matt White tells SBS that he’s on the hunt for a GC rider who may be revealed sooner rather than later.
“It was certainly a beautiful moment.”
- Australian Michael Rogers reflects on winning Stage 11 of the Giro d’Italia with a solo breakaway to Savona.
TWEET, TWEET ...
Great fun riding my 1st roller frenzy in years! Out first round but so much fun! pic.twitter.com/ljMmsP8sBL
— Anna Meares (@AnnaMeares) May 23, 2014 Sub-type: comment CAPTION: Great fun riding my 1st roller frenzy in years! Out first round but so much fun! pic.twitter.com/ljMmsP8sBL & mdash; Anna Meares (@AnnaMeares) May 23, 2014
— Anna Meares might have won two Olympic gold medals but you’ve got to be on your A-Game to progress to the second round of the Port Adelaide Cycling Club’s roller frenzy.
Originally published as The Coffee Ride #33 with Reece Homfray
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