Final teams announced for the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race
The inaugural Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race (UCI 1.1) will be held this Sunday with 20 teams lining up at the start in Geelong.
The final teams have now been added to the startlist with Team Sky (led by Richie Porte) and Cannondale-Garmin (led by Nathan Haas) joining another six WorldTour teams.
ProContinental squad Androni Giocattoli will also be in attendance, as too will an U23 Australian national team.
The elite men’s race will be contested over 174km including three laps of a closing circuit in Geelong; a circuit similar to that used in the 2010 Road World Championships. The women’s race, a National Road Series race held this Saturday, will be 113km long and won’t include the finishing circuit.
The teams contesting the elite men’s race are: Navitas Satalyst, Orica-GreenEdge, BMC, Drapac, MTN-Qhubeka, IAM Cycling, Trek Factory Racing, Etixx-Quick-Step, Katusha, Avanti Racing Team, UniSA-Australia, Data#3 Symantec, Search2retain, Budget Forklifts, African Wildlife Safaris, Charter Mason, UnitedHealthcare, Sky, Androni Giocattoli and Cannondale-Garmin.
Click through for the full startlist for the inaugural Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.
10 things we’ll take from the 2015 Santos Tour Down Under
The 2015 Santos Tour Down Under wound to a close on Sunday with Rohan Dennis (BMC) claiming the overall victory. Having followed the race closely over the past week there were several things that we’ll take away from it.
Here’s an excerpt from a piece we wrote along those lines:
“Bonus seconds continue to decide the TDUThe Tour Down Under is a race that’s normally decided by just a handful of seconds and the 2015 edition was no exception, with Rohan Dennis winning the race by just two seconds. Simon Gerrans won by one second over Cadel Evans last year and in 2012 Gerrans won on a countback after finishing on the same time as Alejandro Valverde.
The issue of bonus seconds is always a contentious one in bike racing and Richie Porte might feel like he’s fallen foul of the system this year. If there had been no time bonuses on offer, Porte would likely have won the race overall. But time bonuses were available, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The benefit of having time bonuses on offer at stage finishes and intermediate sprints is that it encourages more aggressive and therefore more exciting racing. Rather than sitting in and riding for time, GC contenders are encouraged to go for stage wins and contest the intermediate sprints. That can only be a good thing for the fans.
Click here to read the full article.
Five WorldTour teams vying for Fernando Gaviria?
After stage 1 of the Tour de San Luis last week many of us were asking “so, who is Fernando Gaviria?!” The Colombian had just beaten Mark Cavendish in the stage 1 sprint finish — no mean feat. When Gaviria won again on stage 3, also against Cavendish, it was clear the 20-year-old was about to be getting some attention from team managers around the world.
Image: Pablo Cersosimo
Gaviria has reportedly received contract offers from five WorldTour teams following his exploits in Argentina, but the youngster is keen to make a considered decision.
“I am in conversation with [the teams], but I am taking it easy,” Gaviria told Biciciclismo. “I want to get good advice first to avoid making the wrong decision.
“I’m going to analyse the situation and then make a choice for 2016. I’m not thinking about the money — I love cycling and want to win.”
Click here to read more at Wielerflits.nl.
Horner “couldn’t believe” Airgas-Safeway Tour of California snub
Winner of the 2011 Tour of California, Chris Horner, has expressed disappointment after his Airgas-Safeway team wasn’t invited to take part in the 2015 edition of the race.
Chris Horner after winning the 2011 Tour of California.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Horner told Peloton Magazine. “I don’t know what the promoters are thinking. They’ve obviously done harm to the race by not bringing me. You left the only current rider with a Grand-Tour résumé who was going to show up, and I’m a past champion there.”
“I figured we were already in,” he said. “Clearly they didn’t have to bring us, because we’re not a WorldTour team or anything like that. We needed the invite and it wasn’t a sure thing, but when you’re putting on one of the biggest races in the US, you’d think you’d want the biggest US rider to go, so I figured it was a given.”
Manager of Airgas-Safeway, Chris Johnson, told Peloton Magazine that the team’s main objective had been the Tour of California.
“[Horner] was 100% focused on winning the Tour of California this season,” Johnson said. “We talked about it the first time we sat down in November, and the whole team has been working toward that goal ever since. I’m not just saying that loosely: We have literally been studying the average wind speeds and directions in Big Bear during early May in hopes of building the TT bikes out to best perform in those conditions.”
Click here to read more at Peloton Magazine.
The battle to keep the TDU in January
With major reforms forecast for the WorldTour calendar in 2017, organisers of the Tour Down Under are nervous that the race, held in late January, could be forced to move to February to shorten the WorldTour season.
“At the end of the day, it’s a UCI decision as to what they do with the reform in 2017,” said TDU race director Mike Turtur. “We would hope that after 17 editions of this race that we’d like to think that we have enough coins in the bank to suggest that we’re doing the right thing.
“I think the UCI needs to look at our race in January like the Tour de France is in July,” he continued. “It’s critically important that we stage this race during the holiday period, because it’s a tourism event as well as a bike race. It would be like asking the Tour de France to move from July to another month. They would say absolutely not. The reason this race exists is because of tourism.”
“The bike race component is good for the sport, but there are business needs that need to be considered in front of everything else. I think if the UCI takes all of that into consideration, they will make a wise decision about our place on the calendar,” Turtur said. “And look at February, to find another WorldTour event to slot in there between our race, and going back to Europe in March, so there’s not a blank month. We’ve got to find something in February that fits in as a WorldTour race, maybe in the Middle East somewhere.”
Click here to read more at VeloNews.
Armstrong: I wouldn’t change the doping, I’d change the behaviour
by Shane Stokes
Speaking to the BBC in what is being billed as his first TV interview since appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show two years ago, Lance Armstrong has said that if he could turn back the clock, he would change the way he acted but not the taking of banned substances.
Lance Armstrong at the 2000 Tour de France.
Asked by BBC Sports Editor Dan Roan if he would do it all again if he were placed back in the same circumstances, he said that he would.
“It’s a complicated question, and my answer is not a popular answer. If I was racing in 2015, no, I wouldn’t do it again, because I don’t think you have to,” he said. “If you take me back to 1995, when it was completely and totally pervasive, I’d probably do it again. People don’t like to hear that.”
Armstrong then qualified his statement, arguing that he had little choice.
“When I made the decision – when my team-mates made that decision, when the whole peloton made that decision – it was a bad decision and an imperfect time. But it happened.”
“I will tell you what I want to do. I would want to change the man that did those things, maybe not the decision, but the way he acted. The way he treated other people, the way he just couldn’t stop fighting. It was great to fight in training, great to fight in the race, but you don’t need to fight in a press conference, or an interview, or a personal interaction. I’d be fighting with you right now – I would be taking you on.”
Click here to read more at CyclingTips.
What happened to the Rocacorba Daily?
If you’re a regular reader you might be asking “so, what happened to the Rocacorba Daily?!” Good question. As you can see in this post, we haven’t changed the content, we’ve just changed the name to something that’s hopefully a little clearer.
Despite the fact we’ve been publishing the Rocacorba Daily for nearly two years now, we still have a lot of people telling us they don’t know what “Rocacorba” means, what the “Rocacorba Daily” is and how to pronounce “Rocacorba” (ro-ca-cor-ba).
We hope the name change will clarify things. And if you’re one of the thousands of people that come to CT every weekday to read the Daily News Digest and find out what’s happening in the world of road cycling, thank you!
How the Race was Won: Tour Down Under
In the latest “How The Race Was Won”, Cosmo Catalano takes a look at the kick-off to the 2015 WorldTour season, the Santos Tour Down Under.
In Cyclocosm’s “How the race was won” series, you’ll see much more than simple race highlights. Cosmo Catalano picks up the details that nobody else sees, analyses the race situation and its progression, and wraps it in his own brand of humour and razor sharp wit. We hope you enjoy it.
Top 10 devious ways to beat your mates
More gold from the lads at GCN.
What You Missed
And finally this morning, here are a few things you might have missed at CyclingTips in the past few days: