We crossed paths with Martin Barras and Tiffany Cromwell in Buninyong on Sunday during the elite men’s road race at the Mars Cycling Australia Road National Championships. Barras is the senior women’s road coach at Cycling Australia and serves as sport director at select events for Orica-AIS, including the Nationals. Cromwell, who has delivered fourth place for Australia at the Commonwealth Games and fifth place the World Championships last year, moved over to Velocio-SRAM (formally Specialized-lululemon) in 2014 following two seasons with Orica-AIS.
The playful banter between Barras and Cromwell has been developed over more than ten years of working with one another through the Australian Institute of Sport, Cycling Australia, the national team and professionals teams. Cromwell poked fun at Barras’ sense of fashion (or rather lack thereof) while Barras cracked jokes about Cromwell’s sprinting prowess.
When they started discussing the women’s race that took place the day previous, we turned on the cameras.