Rohan Dennis and Melissa Hoskins: Two champions, one horrific night
Two weeks ago, residents of an affluent Adelaide street gathered for a Christmas party. Rohan Dennis and Melissa Hoskins were no-shows. Days later, the Olympian was dead, her former world champion husband charged. Where did it go wrong?
Two weeks ago, residents of Adelaide’s Avenel Gardens Rd happily gathered for a street Christmas party.
Flyers dropped into letter boxes invited everyone along, but the peaceful, affluent neighbourhood’s most recent arrivals – former world champion cyclists Rohan Dennis and Melissa Hoskins – were no-shows with their two young children.
Just days later, the cheerful banter of the festive season was replaced by the wail of sirens and the flashing lights of emergency services vehicles after Hoskins was struck in the suburban street by a 4WD ute, allegedly driven by her husband, Dennis.
She was taken to Royal Adelaide Hospital and died hours later.
Details of last Saturday’s deadly crash remain uncertain, but police have charged Dennis, 33, with dangerous driving causing the death of Hoskins – an adored mother, daughter and sister and cherished member of Australia’s elite cycling community – along with driving without due care and attention and endangering life.
Initial reports suggest the couple may have argued and that around 8pm, under clear skies, Hoskins, 32, jumped onto the grey Volkswagen’s bonnet and reached for the door handle to try to stop the vehicle.
It’s alleged Dennis continued to drive until his wife fell, and that she was dragged some distance down the road.
Among the many high achievers who call the street home are an array of medical specialists, but many of those who hadn’t dispersed for the holidays were unaware of the tragedy unfolding outside their front doors.
“We didn’t notice anything until 10 o’clock when we went out to photograph Jupiter, and there was a police car parked in front of our driveway with the lights going,” said one resident, a trauma surgeon.
“Then a little bit later we saw a dark 4x4 being towed away by a tow truck.”
There had been no sign of trouble between Dennis and Hoskins, who lived just a few houses away after moving into the street in the previous weeks, he said.
“We probably saw them once with their kids and bicycles, but that’s about it,” he said.
“It’s a very tragic thing. There’s two kids now minus one parent and possibly a second parent in the future.”
Dennis and Hoskins bought their stone-front villa for $1.88m in mid 2019. For years afterwards it was rented out as they split their time between Australia and Europe, and they only moved in after Dennis retired from racing last year.
Hoskins, originally from the Perth Hills, was an extraordinarily talented athlete who won gold in the team pursuit at the world championships in 2015 and represented Australia at the London and Rio Olympics.
She retired in 2017, citing waning interest in her punishing training regimen and a wish to become a mum, and married Dennis in Margaret River the next year.
It was a memorable period for the pair in many ways, with Dennis winning back-to-back individual time trial world championships in 2018 and 2019.
However, the purchase of the couple’s house in Avenel Gardens Rd 4½ years ago came at the most tumultuous time in Dennis’s career. Just days before the contract settled, he dramatically walked out of the world’s biggest bike race, the Tour de France, 80km into the 12th stage, after an internal team rift.
That controversy was long behind them as 2024 approached, and the couple was finally free of the rigours of professional racing that had until then consumed their lives.
A fresh start beckoned, with Dennis sharing on social media his plans to pursue an interest in winemaking.
Hoskins’ former manager Rochelle Gilmore this week said the death of her friend was “probably the most shocking news I’ve ever received”. She had not “cried so hard and so loud for so long in all my life”.
“From the moment she started dating Rohan, she committed 100 per cent to all of the troubles and the difficulties that he went through in his career,” Gilmore said. The comment appeared to allude to the difficulties associated with Dennis’s well-publicised volatility.
Perhaps the essential ingredient to him becoming the fastest man alive, the perfectionist side of his character also often put him offside with teammates.
Gorazd Stangelj, sports director of Dennis’s Bahrain-Merida team when he abandoned the Tour de France, described him at the time as “a special guy, let’s say”, adding that “all the champions are”.
“He’s the guy, he wants to have everything 100 per cent. It’s not easy to have everything 100 per cent,” Stangelj said.
Others were more direct. Australia’s Rio Olympics silver medallist Alex Edmondson said in 2016 that training with Dennis was “one of the toughest times I’ve ever had in cycling”.
“I think because I was one of the younger ones, Rohan made my life pretty tough. I’m not sure what the reasoning behind that was. I never really worked it out,” he said.
Dennis later cited “personal family reasons” for abandoning the Tour de France, saying the team environment was “causing me to be, let’s just say, not a good or happy person to be around”.
“It was snowballing, it was getting worse and in the end I didn’t want to be a statistic of a sportsperson who was potentially going to be divorced,” he said.
In other interviews, Dennis described cycling as his outlet to vent and said he was “a bit OCD, that’s the nice way of putting it”.
He has said that when faced with intense emotions he takes a deep breath and counts to 10, “and if that doesn’t work I count to 100”.
But it’s not clear at this stage what the scenario was that led to Hoskins’ death, nor what Dennis’s mindset was at the time.
The couple’s social media accounts present a picture of a contented family. Dennis’s final Instagram post features a photo of him standing with Hoskins and their son and daughter in front of a Christmas tree.
Friends were this week fending off trolls online, asking people to refrain from rushing to judgment before all the facts are known.
Vital information may come from CCTV cameras stationed in front of a home owned by a prominent Adelaide real estate agent.
The cameras appear to watch over part of the area where the incident unfolded. The agent said he couldn’t discuss it when contacted by this newspaper this week.
A retired lawyer who lives on the street said: “All I can say is that we’re shocked and horrified.”
Another resident said: “It’s traumatic and very unusual. And the truth has to come out because something happened.”
Amy Cure rode alongside Hoskins as part of the quartet that in 2015 won the World Championship gold and set a new world record. Cure said Hoskins would be forever missed.
“My rival, my teammate, writing our names in world record books, world championship victories, Olympic Games upsets, to celebrating retirements,” she said.
“You were there for the entirety of my career. I’m especially grateful for our time post retirement where we have had the opportunity to consolidate our journey over many laughs and great memories.”
Another member of that record-breaking team, Annette Edmondson, said “the world had lost a shining star”.
“A fun, loving, hilarious person, who was so talented in so many areas. A force to be reckoned with, she took the cycling world by storm, before pursuing her next dream; starting a family and becoming the ultimate mum.”
One of Australia’s greatest track cyclists, Anna Meares, said she had a “very heavy heart” after the loss of Hoskins, a close friend.
Hoskins’ potential was first spotted at the age of 15 when she was picked up by the Western Australian Institute of Sport’s Talent Identification Program. Within three years, she had become an Australian champion.
The institute issued a statement describing her as “an incredibly talented athlete, but more importantly a beautiful person who will be missed by so many”.
Her devastated parents and sister described her as a freewheeling spirit and “a giver with a big heart, patience and zest for life”.
They noted that not only had they lost a daughter and sister, her children had lost their mum.
“She was the rock of their life and ours and we need to honour her memory so they can grow up knowing who she was,” they said.
“In her short life, Melissa has had so many positive touch points in and around the world.”
Her funeral will be held in her hometown of Perth, with a memorial service in Adelaide after the Tour Down Under.
Dennis has been bailed to appear in court in March.
