The Coffee Ride #39 with Reece Homfray
AS MUCH as Matt Goss would love to be at the Tour de France this week, it’s with a degree of acceptance and understanding that he is instead training around his Monaco home.
AUSSIE CYCLING FRESHLY BREWED EVERY WEDNESDAY MORNING, EXCLUSIVE TO ADVERTISER.COM.AU
GOSSY EYES POLAND, VUELTA
AS MUCH as Matt Goss would love to be at the Tour de France this week, it’s with a degree of acceptance and understanding that he is instead training around his Monaco home with an eye on the second half of the season.
The 27-year-old Tasmanian is absent from the biggest race of the year for the first time since 2010 but is optimistic about stage wins in the Tour of Poland and Vuelta a Espana later in the year.
Two years after he delivered Orica-GreenEDGE seven top-10 finishes in the Tour and was third in the points classification, Goss missed selection all together as the team took a different approach to the big dance.
“They wanted to take a bit of a different team to the Tour this year which is fine and focus on the more up-and-down kind of stages,” Goss told News Corp before training on Monday.
“It’s hard enough anyway in the sprints with Cavendish, Kittel and Greipel all with seven and eight-man (sprint) teams. It makes life a bit difficult unless you’ve got full teams committed (to bunch sprints).
“I might end up like I did last year a bit, in that washing machine of lead-outs and end up crashing a lot of the time.”
Goss’ form throughout May and June was solid without setting the world on fire. He ran 8th, 9th, 3rd and 4th on stages at the Tour of California and had a top-10 at the Tour de Suisse before crashing out on Stage 5.
“Suisse was a bit chaotic. I hurt my knee quite a bit in that crash in the sprint on Stage 5 and probably wouldn’t have been going to the Tour anyway because I ended up having about 10 days off the bike with my knee blown up and a lot of fluid around the tendon and the kneecap,” he said.
“So that kind of knocked it about. I had an MRI last week and pretty much got back to training a couple of days after that.”
It means he’s aiming at the Tour of Poland from August 3 and the Vuelta starting August 23.
“The Vuelta should be good, though. The team hasn’t been selected for that yet but that’s the plan and there are probably more opportunities — you don’t need a six or seven-man lead-out train to try to win a stage there. They’re a lot more up and down and smaller bunches coming to the finish,” Goss said.
“There might be an opportunity to pick up a win or two.”
This week Goss has been training in the mornings and watching his Orica-GreenEDGE teammates in the Tour on TV in the afternoons.
“I’ve definitely watched the stages so far. Bit of a rough one the first day and that probably knocked them around on day two which was obviously a big goal for them,” he said.
“But unfortunately that’s bike riding sometimes. It’s pretty unpredictable and you can end up on your backside probably more often than you win races.”
Goss is out of contract with Orica-GreenEDGE this season and said he expects to know more about where he’ll be next season in the next month.
“There’s a bit of talk going on but nothing is finalised that’s for sure,” he said.
“We’ll keep talking and this is the time it starts to happen with the Tour and the week after which is always generally a moving point.”
THE MAKING OF CAROLINE BUCHANAN — WORLD CHAMPION
CAROLINE Buchanan realised a lifelong dream of becoming BMX world champion at the age of 22 last year, but the making of her happened more than a decade earlier without her even realising it.
Buchanan was a girl racing BMX in Canberra which meant she was among the minority in a male-dominated sport.
“When I started in BMX there weren’t too many girls that did it, I raced the boys, I looked up to the boys, I was one of the boys,” she said.
The other experience that put Buchanan on the path to the rainbow jersey was racing the world championships while she was still at primary school.
“I was lucky to have very supportive parents who got me to the world championships when I was nine years old,” Buchanan said.
“It’s those experiences of being on the world stage and making mistakes and having failures are the things I look back on now and called upon when I got to the Olympic level.”
Put simply, when Buchanan watches juniors racing BMX — either at her home track with the Tuggeranong Vikings or in Rotterdam for the world titles — it’s like watching an earlier version of herself.
And that’s what motivated her in January to start ‘Buchanan Next Gen’ — an all-girls BMX racing team which she plans to grow from two to four riders next year.
“I started this girls team wanting to help and mentor them and ease that pathway of getting to the top and being there,” Buchanan said.
“I’ve been able to share my experiences and help them as well as opening up some doors to sponsorship and partners that I’ve had and allowed the girls to have the best products on the market.
“I wanted to make sure these girls who are aiming for 2020 Olympics in Tokyo and 2024 have support and those experiences now.”
Part of the project involved helping to raise $10,000 to get her two riders, Mikayla Rose and Paige Harding, to this month’s world championships in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
“One of the girls Mikayla Rose is 14-years-old from Canberra and I’ve been watching her since she was six and started in the sport,” Buchanan said.
“And basically both these girls come from great families that back them as well and they have this great passion.
“They want to be Olympians. They’re champions already, but they have this special something and in BMX which is a male dominated sport, you have to have this inner mongrel, this fight and the ability to deal with adversity and it’s shown in these girls already.
“So these world championships are pretty crucial to their long-term development as an athlete.”
While the two young riders on Buchanan Next Gen will go to Rotterdam simply for the experience of it, Buchanan herself is going there to defend her world title.
Cycling Australia’s reigning ‘Cyclist of the Year’, Buchanan has been home training in Canberra for the past two weeks after winning the UCI BMX Supercross World Cup in Berlin last month.
“At the moment it’s a lot of power work in the gym, a lot of Olympic lifts and everything now is fast,” she said.
“Then the last week is always very short and sharp and recovery is the key.”
She said going into this year’s world titles which run from July 23-27 as ‘the hunted’ rather than ‘the hunter’ was a good feeling.
“Last year I went in as the defending champion for the time trial where as this year I’m coming in as the racing world champion,” she said.
“And the racing is always the more important part and the rainbow stripes that I wanted to have on my back for the entire year.
“I really like having that target on my back and being at the top.
“Pressure is good — it keeps you on your toes and I really want to win again and defend my title.
“It’s everything I worked hard for and that dream since I was a little girl starting at the age of five around the BMX track.
“Now that I’ve got it and also mountain biking, I don’t want to let it go.”
When she’s not training or racing, Buchanan is busy filming short YouTube videos for her ‘Buchanan On Air’ series and this video above which is an exclusive look at her Next Gen program.
“That's kind of what the program is all about, chasing the rainbow jersey and it is hard, sometimes it will seem out of reach, but you’ve got to believe that there is a pot of gold at the end of it,” she said.
FROM THE BAY TO THE BARKER: 2015 CHALLENGE TOUR
TOUR Down Under organisers have revealed the route for next year’s Bupa Challenge Tour which attracts more than 6000 riders on an annual basis.
Recreational cyclists take to the same roads as the professionals and next January they will travel from Glenelg to Mt Baker, which includes visits through Old Noarlunga, Strathalbyn and Meadows.
It is the first time Glenelg has been included on the Tour Down Under map since 2008 when it hosted the Down Under Classic.
Accommodation in Adelaide's premier beachside suburb is expected to be at a premium for the week leading up to both the Bupa Challenge Tour Stage 4 on Friday, January 23, with a street party in Jetty Rd planned for January 22 and Australia Day celebrations on January 26.
If you missed Sunday’s announcement, check out the stage map here and get training because you’ve got four distances to choose from ranging from 151.7km to 27km.
LUCAS DOES THE DOUBLE
VICTORIAN teenager Lucas Hamilton put himself right in the frame for world championship selection by winning the men’s under-19 road race at junior nationals in Canberra on the weekend.
Hamilton, who goes to boarding school in Ballarat, also won the under-19 road race at the Oceania titles earlier this year.
“I’m pretty happy to see that the training has paid off and you’ve got medals to show for it,” he said.
“A group formed early and I wasn’t in it, then another rider and I went up the road to try to bring it back.
“Eventually there were four of us, then it was down to three and coming into the last 3km I got a little 20m gap and held it there until the finish.”
Hamilton also claimed silver in the men’s time trial to mirror Tasmanian Macey Stewart’s efforts in the women’s road race (gold) and time trial (silver).
The VIS rider is now waiting to hear whether he’s selected for the world titles in September which will mean a five-week training and racing block overseas in the lead-up.
Ultimately he hopes to follow in older brother Tom’s footsteps with the 20-year-old currently with Cycling Australia’s WorldTour Academy in Europe.
“It would be massive aim if I ended up going overseas to try to impress the selectors for that,” he said.
Asked whether he now had the speed and strength to match Tom who is two years older, Hamilton said he wasn’t sure.
“We’re very similar riders but I don’t know.
“We did most of the NRS races last year together but I haven’t raced him for a fair while.”
Stewart meanwhile continued her big season by beating SA’s Alex Manley in a tight finish to the under-19 women’s race.
“I was definitely focusing on the time trial and I was happy with my result, but I didn’t expect the road race result at all so it is an awesome feeling to come away with the gold,” said Stewart who is set to ride the junior track world titles in Korea next month.
QUOTES OF THE WEEK (from opening weekend at the Tour)
“You saw it. You can say what happened. We won’t be protesting. Cavendish is out of the race anyway. I prefer to talk about our own riders and it was a good performance by all of our team until we had bad luck.”
- Orica-GreenEDGE general manager Shayne Bannan on the crash that wiped out Simon Gerrans on Stage 1.
“It was mind over matter. I’m definitely old, and I was way over my limits but I went ‘all in’. Now I’ll see tomorrow how I survive the stage.”
- Stage 1 of the Tour de France and Jens Voigt attacks the breakaway. What else did you expect?
“I think I’m over it. I’m still angry, but I’m trying to move on. I’m going to training camp next week and I’m going to get ready for the end of the season.”
- David Millar on Garmin-Sharp’s decision to leave him out of its Tour de France team.
“The fans were incredible, there are no words for that and it was an awesome day. I was in front and there were so many people I just yelled at them to tell them to be even louder pretending like I couldn’t hear them — I thought I lost my hearing.”
- German Marcel Kittel on wearing the yellow jersey on Stage 2 of the Tour de France in the UK ... and those phenomenal crowds.
TWEET, TWEET ...
I'm pretty sure @Mark_Renshaw got kicked out of the tour a few years back for a head but that was a lot less than that of cav's!
— Matt Goss (@mattgoss1986) July 5, 2014— Aussie Matt Goss on the Stage 1 incident that got everyone talking over the weekend.
Originally published as The Coffee Ride #39 with Reece Homfray
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