Cycling Australia takes $1 million gamble on winning gold at Rio Olympics

CYCLING Australia has invested more than $1m and hired a motorsport engineer to forensically examine its track bike and athletes to find every millisecond it hopes will make a difference at the Rio Olympics.

Australia's Kaarle McCulloch, left, and Anna Meares ride during the qualifying round of the women's team sprint in London in 2012.

CYCLING Australia has invested more than $1m and hired a motorsport engineer from the UK to forensically examine its track bike and athletes to find every millisecond it hopes will make a difference at the Rio Olympics.

CA’s high performance unit ordered a full-scale review of the program after the 2012 London Games in which Australia won one gold medal compared to Great Britain’s eight.

In 2014 with AIS support it hired British motorsport engineer Andy Warr who had spent the previous 20 years working in electronics and performance analysis with Le Mans, sports and touring cars.

Warr’s team has conducted full body analysis of Australian riders and every component of the bikes they will ride in Rio as well as equipment such as shoes, helmets and skinsuits.

The complete package was presented to riders in-person and via Skype in Adelaide on Monday but the bikes will not be seen in public until riders start their overseas training camps from next month.

CA’s high performance manager Kevin Tabotta confirmed Australia’s track cyclists would continue to ride a Bicycle Technologies ‘BT’ bike in Rio which continues a 20-year partnership with the manufacturer.

Sprinters and endurance riders will be aboard both the BT Ultra and the Edge which together with changes to equipment have been subjected to extensive wind-tunnel and track-based testing.

But the bikes will not be launched per se like the US track cycling team which last month unveiled its radical left-hand drive Felt bikes for Rio.

The Americans have moved the chainset from the traditional right hand side of the bike to the left in a bid to improve aerodynamics.

Great Britain also this month trumpeted its track bike for Rio after switching to Cervelo in the past year.

Tabotta does not concede the Australian team was under-prepared in London because he believes it did everything possible with the available resources.

Jack Bobridge, Rohan Dennis, Michael Hepburn, and Glenn O'Shea in action on the track. Picture: Adam Head.

But he says the work that has gone in to the 2016 campaign is “without question” greater than 2012 because of support from the Australian Institute of Sport’s competitive innovation grants program.

“I think we presented a competitive package in London and I’m comfortable that at the time we did everything we could,” Tabotta said.

“Afterwards we identified that we got this far with this amount of resources and how can we do better?

“We went to the AIS with a plan and said ‘this is where we feel we need to bridge the gap’, is there any way you can assist us?”

“The assistance we got from the AIS has been huge and that’s over a three-and-a-half year period.

“The money in research and innovation assistance as well as what we can tap into at the AIS to test and validate.”

Before Warr’s appointment in July, 2014, CA toured Red Bull Racing’s Formula One headquarters at Milton Keynes in the UK.

“That opened our eyes to the possibilities of being able to work with someone outside of the industry who could bring knowledge from these high performance areas,” Tabotta said.

“So it’s an interesting collision of objectives and passions.”

Warr said his team had gone to incredible lengths to examine what would make a difference in Rio.

“We have quantified everything we have done,” Warr said.

“We’ve gone about the process of actually defining what these (time) savings actually are.”

Despite being born and raised in the UK, Warr said his work with CA meant his loyalties were with now with the green and gold.

“My goal is to win medals for Australia, that’s why I’m here,” Warr said.

“I’m very emotionally attached to this now, it’s a lot of hard work over the last 18 months, a few sleepless nights.”

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Originally published as Cycling Australia takes $1 million gamble on winning gold at Rio Olympics