Photography by Matt de Neef & Cor Vos

Rocacorba Daily

Monday January 5, 2015

by Matt de Neef - January 5, 2015

In today's Rocacorba Daily news digest, the first edition of 2015: Caleb Ewan and Chloe Hosking lead the Bay Crits ahead of final stage; Riis likely to learn fate soon in relation to Anti Doping Denmark’s investigation; Marcel Kittel interview - “It is going to be a challenging year for everyone”; Report - German mainstream TV station ARD to return to showing Tour de France; Cycling Australia cuts women's road development program; Team Wiggins to debut at the Challenge Mallorca?; "I want to be faster this year" - Sam Bennett targeting cycling’s top sprinters; Strava introduces annual achievements; Road safety ad from Northern Ireland; 2015 Friends Life Women's Tour promo; Peter Sagan rides rings around trials champion Vittorio Brumotti; What you missed over the Christmas break.

Caleb Ewan and Chloe Hosking lead the Bay Crits ahead of final stage

After three days of the Mitchelton Bay Cycling Classic in Victoria, Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEdge) holds an unassailable lead in the elite men’s overall classification while Chloe Hosking (Wiggle-Honda) narrowly leads the elite women.

Caleb Ewan has dominated the Bay Crits thus far, winning all three stages and looking the clear favourite to win today a claim a record-breaking clean sweep. Ewan won the first stage on Geelong’s Richie Boulevard from a two-man breakaway with Kiwi Greg Henderson (see image above) before taking stage 2 in a bunch sprint just up the road at Eastern Beach. On stage 3 Ewan was again piloted into position by his Orica-GreenEdge teammates, the 20-year-old finishing off the job in Portarlington.

Chloe Hosking’s tenure as a Wiggle-Honda rider got off to the perfect start, winning stage 1 from a five-rider lead group. Hosking was third on stage 2, a stage dominated by reigning Australian road race champion Gracie Elvin (Orica-AIS) who won with a bold solo move. Peta Mullens won solo on the challenging Portarlington course on Sunday while Chloe Hosking’s fifth place was enough to hold on to the overall lead.

Chloe Hosking took the leader’s yellow jersey after winning stage 1 ahead of Lauren Kitchen and Lizzie Williams.

Today’s final stage of the Bay Crits will be held in the Melbourne suburb of Williamstown with the elite women’s race starting at 1pm and the elite men’s race starting at 2pm. Caleb Ewan can’t be beaten in the eite men’s overall standings but just two points separates the elite women with Lauren Kitchen (Roxsolt) in second place.

Click through for reports and results from the 2015 Bay Crits so far. Stay posted to CyclingTips for a selection of images from the four days of racing, coming tomorrow.

Riis likely to learn fate soon in relation to Anti Doping Denmark’s investigation

by Shane Stokes

A long-awaited doping report which will determine whether or not Bjarne Riis can continue his work in cycling, finally appears close to being released, with the director of Anti Doping Denmark (ADD) indicating that the outcome could be announced soon.

Bjarne_Riis_2006_camp

Lone Hansen told the Jyllands-Posten publication that the current inquiry by the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) into doping in the sport is of interest in ADD’s work.

“We don’t have to wait until the CIRC is finished, but we have had great interest in continuing our investigation, as long as there are others working with things that may be of relevance to us,” she said.

“We have exchanged information [with CIRC – ed.] so we are well advanced,” Hansen added, saying that this had been a factor in the investigation’s delay.

Danish media sources have long suggested that Riis may have been implicated and could face sanctions once the ADD report is finalised. In 2007 Riis admitted having used doping products to win the 1996 Tour de France.

Click here to read more at CyclingTips.

Marcel Kittel interview: “It is going to be a challenging year for everyone”

by Shane Stokes

He’s been the dominant sprinter in cycling for the past two seasons but, as Marcel Kittel heads towards his first races of the 2015 season, he’s taking nothing for granted. The Giant-Alpecin (formerly Giant-Shimano) rider, now 26 years of age, is moving into what should be his peak period as a competitor. Stronger, more experienced and more confident than before, his momentum should carry him up a notch in 2015.

“The main objective for 2015 will be the sprints,” Kittel told CyclingTips. “I will of course try to do races on the highest level and to take as many opportunities as possible to go for the victory there.”

The Giant-Alpecin rider’s season will begin this month with the Santos Tour Down Under.

“I am really looking forward to Down Under as I know it is a race where there is absolutely no pressure. That for me is a really nice way to start into the new year, to get some race kilometres. Also, to be in the situation to have already some races when I come to Qatar. That race is really flat and, when it is not too windy, it should really be one for the sprinters.”

Click here to read more at CyclingTips.

Report - German mainstream TV station ARD to return to showing Tour de France

by Shane Stokes

German cycling has received a significant boost with reports that that national television station ARD has decided to once again cover the Tour de France.

It and fellow station ZDF backed off on their coverage following numerous doping scandals and completely exited from screening the race in 2012. However the relative lack of scandals since then plus, presumably, the improving fortunes of German riders, have prompted it to reconsider.

Spiegel reports that the station will screen the Tour from 4pm local time until the end of each stage, thus joining Eurosport in showing the race. While the latter has been able to provide coverage to cycling fans, the addition of a mainstream channel should have a positive effect on helping the sport to grow again.

Click here to read more at CyclingTips.

Cycling Australia cuts women’s road development program

Cycling Australia has scrapped its development program for female road cyclists as part of wide-scale budgetary cuts, brought on by the governing body’s poor financial situation.

Cycling Australia’s high performance director Kevin Tabotta told The Age that he hoped the program would soon be reinstated.

“The program has been suspended until further notice … and purely for financial reasons,” Tabotta said. “We’re not saying we won’t re-start that program but just for now it’s not our highest priority and we’ll be doing our development [for women road cyclists] within the Orica-AIS team.

“It has given me no pleasure to have to do this but it’s just a financial reality right now.”

Click here to read more at The Age.

Team Wiggins to debut at the Challenge Mallorca?

Cycling Weekly reports that Bradley Wiggins’ new development team, known as this stage as Team Wiggins, is set to make its racing debut at the four-day Challenge Mallorca event in late January and early February.

Wiggins himself won’t ride with the team until June; until then he’ll be riding with Team Sky, and targeting races such as Paris-Roubaix.

According to Cycling Weekly the team has been awarded a UCI Continental license for 2015, but no official announcement has yet been made by the UCI.

Click here to read more at Cycling Weekly.

“I want to be faster this year - Sam Bennett targeting cycling’s top sprinters

by Shane Stokes

Young Irish sprinter Sam Bennett has spoken to CyclingTips about his goals for the upcoming season and the improvement he’s seen in his own performance over the past 12 months.

On December 2 Bennett tweeted that he had hit a new high max power output, making a considerable jump on what he had achieved during the 2014 season.

“So happy with winter training so far, 1716watts @69kg (-2kg),” he wrote. “126watts up on last yr. Target this winter 1800watts+”

Speaking to CyclingTips further about his development, the Bora-Argon 18 rider said:

“During the season I was starting to get up to 1600 watts,” he told CyclingTips. “Then I was doing a lot of weights when I was in the gym in Calpe and it started creeping up further.”

Bennett is very much looking forward to getting year two underway.

“The team are building a strong leadout train for me, too; all the small things add up, and that will be important too.”

“I would absolutely love to get into the Tour and to be our sprinter for it. That’s a big goal for me.”

Click here to read more at CyclingTips.

Strava introduces annual achievements

If you’re a regular Strava user you might have noticed a few changes to the way the ride-tracking app is handing out awards and achievements in 2015. In addition to the existing, all-time KOMs and PRs, Strava now features annual achievements which, according to Strava, “gives everyone a chance to start the year fresh.”

Here’s how Strava explained the change:

“

We’ve heard from many Strava athletes that it’s not easy to top a PR set in peak fitness, during a race, or “when they were younger.” But we all still set annual goals and like seeing our progress over a season or a year. Annual Achievements are one way Strava recognizes these personal improvements and celebrates the awesome accomplishments of 2015.

All-time achievements appear as solid icons and annual achievements appear as outlined icons.

Click here to learn more at Strava.

Road safety ad from Northern Ireland

Here’s a great little road safety campaign from Northern Ireland (although not everyone thinks it’s great):

2015 Friends Life Women’s Tour promo

Last year’s Women’s Tour was one of the highlights of the elite women’s calendar with huge crowds flocking to the streets of Britain to see the race pass through. The second edition of the race won’t be held until June, but already the excitement is starting to build.

Peter Sagan rides rings around trials champion Vittorio Brumotti

It appears to be a case of new kit, old tricks for the ever-entertaining Peter Sagan:

What you missed over the Christmas break

And finally this morning, here are some interesting articles and videos you might have missed over the Christmas-New Year period, from CyclingTips and beyond:

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Today’s feature image was shot by Matt de Neef during the extremely windy stage 2 of the 2015 Bay Crits in Geelong. Stay posted to CyclingTips for a selection of images from the four days of racing, coming tomorrow.

Tags: 2015 Bay Crits, 2015 Women's Tour, Bjarne Riis, Bradley Wiggins, caleb ewan, Chloe Hosking, Cycling Australia, Marcel Kittel, Peter Sagan, Rocacorba Daily, Sam Bennett, Strava, Team Wiggins

donncha

“Hey Strava, I’m not as fit/strong/good as I used to be, but I’d still love to get some medals on my rides so I can validate my existence. Can you help me out? Pleeeeease?”

Woo hoo, medals for everyone!
- Dave
  
  Looks like Strava is itself now past its peak.
  
  This should slow the rate of new account creation.
  - joe
    
    I heard the hype is over and lots of people are deleting their accounts
    - Dave
      
      True. So many reasons to avoid getting sucked into it in the first place.
      
      Street racing is stressful and ruins the enjoyment of cycling.
      
      Insurers can decline a claim for being a racing incident if the policy holder was contesting a Strava segment at the time.
      - jules
        
        why do you associate strava with street racing? you don’t need to chase KOMs to use strava
        
        De Mac
        
        I certainly don’t! hahaha
- [email protected]
  
  I thoroughly approve of this initiative and will consider forwarding it to the UCI for their consideration as a model for use in racing.
  - jules
    
    hey matt just curious, what’s your surn.. oh don’t worry.
Dave

Shouldn’t it be the men’s road cycling development program that gets cut first before the women? The male road cyclists who have a hope in hell of ever succeeding at the Olympics, Commonwealth Games or World Championships (the events where medals deliver funding to CA from the Australian Sports Commission) all have their development handled by private teams.

Kevin Tabotta needs to have his position suspended until further notice (for purely financial reasons) if he thinks cutting programs that deliver medals is the way to get CA turned around. The bulging back office needs to have the fat trimmed off first, not the frontline programs.
- Callum Dwyer
  
  Yes, you do have wonder if cuts could have been made elsewhere in CA. After all it’s not like the money save from cutting women’s development program will go back in grass roots cycling.
  
  But I guessing there some politics behind decision that the public isn’t being informed about.
  - Dave
    
    Politics at Cycling Australia? Surely not!
    
    It’s rather bizarre, because the money they spend on the women’s development program isn’t even their own money to begin with!
    
    They obviously won’t cut funding to the women’s side of track cycling, because it brings in so many medals for such a small outlay that it gets used to cross-subsidise other programs. Maybe the Australian Sports Commission should look at ring-fencing money by gender, so that at least 80% of the funding awarded to CA whenever Anna Meares or Annette Edmonson wins an international medal must be spent on women’s development programs and not subsidising the professional career of Caleb Ewan.
    - Sean
      
      haha Anna Meares has had more success than the whole track program did under that nutter walsh. She is a legend.
      - Dave
        
        And much more success than the men’s road program did when the EPO junkie Matt White was in charge.
- Michele
  
  As a side point, Do cyclists who make their way through AIS or Cycling Australia Road Program ever have to pay back the monies that have been invested in them?
  
  Does any athlete?
  
  For example, let’s just say I’m a world class, top of the shelf professional cyclist who has made his way through the ranks of the AIS Cycling Program.
  
  I know earn in excess of 1 million Euros a year. Am I made to repay the monies spent by Cycling Australia or the AIS to make me that brilliant cyclist? Should I be? If it was a HECS debt I would?
  
  I often wonder if Cycling Australia worked with the model above, [I don’t believe they are], then they would have a lot more funds to use.
  
  Or do they see me as an investment for the sport, a walking, talking billboard, to attract others to cycling, thus increasing the funds?
  
  But to your post: I agree with you 100% Dave, the men’s development program should get cut before the women’s.
  - Dave
    
    There is no Higher Education Contribution Scheme in place for AIS athletes.
    
    I believe there should be at least for the AIS - sport bodies such as Cycling Australia, Swimming Australia, Cricket Australia and so on could be left to their own devices as to what they do with their own money. For taxpayers to be funding Gold Medal Athletes who go on to lucrative professional careers is reckless at a time when we don’t have Gold Medal Schools, Gold Medal Mental Health Services or Gold Medal Public Transport Infrastructure.
    
    I’m not advocating a complete cessation of taxpayer funding for sport, just that higher earning athletes start to make repayments just as a higher earning university graduate does even if they do a job of critical importance to society. Sport would still continue to get lots of public funding, including HECS debts written off for athletes who don’t earn enough to reach the HECS repayment threshold - which would in effect be a subsidy of women’s sport.
    
    I would also support allowing a portion of an athlete’s HECS debt to be worked off by winning Olympic medals for Australia and by doing free work to support their sport at grassroots level. Look at any elite Australian swimmer’s twitter feed, they clearly have enough time on their hands to be spending an hour or two a day teaching some kids to swim.
    - jules
      
      the HECS model is based on the premise of education being charged on a fee-for-service basis, but the fee able to be covered by a loan. this could be done, but it would act as a significant deterrent to higher-performing athletes, who would likely start thinking “what if I didn’t got through the AIS?” potentially self-defeating.
      
      another way of thinking about the AIS is as workplace training. there are similar schemes in many workplaces where you ‘have’ to pay the cost back to your employer if you break covenants, e.g. leave the job before specified period of time. it doesn’t work - the law views workplace training as a cost to the employer.
      
      it’s impracticable to run the AIS as a mafia-style scheme “we did you a favour, now we need something from you.. “
      - Dave
        
        “…but it would act as a significant deterrent to higher-performing athletes, who would likely start thinking “what if I didn’t got through the AIS?” potentially self-defeating.”
        
        They might get to the top on the back of their own hard work, as certain cyclists like Chloe Hosking have done when they haven’t been lucky enough to be one of the Chosen Ones at the CA-AIS programs.
        
        I would not suggest that the whole of an athlete’s funding be repayable (not unless they get to the point that their AIS bill would just account for a couple of options on their next Lamborghini) but just a slice of the pie as is the case with Commonwealth-supported students at our universities.
        
        jules
        
        i agree with you in principle, but in practice the number of AIS athletes who make enough money to pay any costs back is probably much smaller than you imagine. you end up with an unwieldy, expensive scheme to administer - for not a lot of gain (kind of like bike rego). also possession is 9/10ths of the law. having an arrangement for money to be repaid, and ensuring it is actually paid back are 2 very different matters..
    - CC
      
      Spot on Dave. Just like any other kid about to enter Uni, there are no guarantees of a job at the other end, but the debt is there.
Michele

Best thing I ever did was get rid of my Garmin Edge and Strava account. I now wear a GPS watch, which I’ve set to only show the time of day.

I ride for the joy of it. At my worst I found myself fixated with the Garmin display and would even do a couple of laps around the block just so I’d hit an even number of kms.

The funny thing is - I’m doing more kms now then I ever was because I am enjoying it so much. And as a consequence, I also find that when I do periodically check my ‘exercise files’ on my watch my average speed is higher than it even was when I was on Strava.
Michele

Oh, BTW CT. A cracker edition of Rocacorba to introduce 2015 with. Great to read; it brings some routine back into my life after the last week or so :)
- http://www.cyclingTipsBlog.com cyclingTips
  
  Thanks Michele!
Rowena

The Strava thing is so embarrassing, I’m the QOM on a bunch of climbs on a bunch of hills that I seriously practice the art of a reverse breakaway on…. It’s not cool.
- Steel
  
  But you’re not really qom. Just qom2015. From the sounds of it, you won’t be qom for long.
  
  Anyways, using strava for fictitious online bike racing is just ridiculous. The only really valid Q/KOMs are the long climbs, of which there are about 30 in Victoria. So unless you have one of those, you’re just another chump in a bunch or on a motorcycle or whatever.
  
  I use Strava to track my rides and try to beat my own personal bests, and to hand out a few thumbs ups for mates’ epics or when they go out and get flogged in C grade. For me, nothing has changed as a result of the new system.
  - Robert Merkel
    
    Yep.
    
    It’s a nice way to track your riding, and your mates’ riding, and get a rough idea of how you’re going. But K/QOMs are just a matter of who’s bothered to show up to a climb and put an effort in. I do get flogged in C grade and I held a KOM for a sweet 3km climb in NE Victoria for a while, purely because it had only been ridden by a couple of other people.
  - jules
    
    it’s a bit different for women riders. there aren’t as many on Strava as there are blokes. my wife goes for a cruise on her commuter and comes back with top 10s. meanwhile i’m 1534th after flogging my guts out and having just bought new carbon wheels - then you look up the KOM and find out he could have been a WT pro in the Lance era but didn’t want to shoot up, so just racks up Strava KOMs at home for fun now.
Sean Doyle

I think most people now are using Strava as a training diary for themselves as well as seeing what their mates are doing. I’ve started hiding all the stupid little sections and all the repeat sections and only keeping the true KOMs and maybe a few of the longer flat or rolling sections that don’t have stop/give way signs and lights etc. They can be handy for measureing progress when used as a test by yourself. Some of my rides will only show a small handful of sections and some will only show one or two if there are no real geographical features found.
- De Mac
  
  For me it is split between tracking my progress - or lack thereof - as well as seeing what mates and others who I have run into along the way are up to. It also fulfills the requirement of being a great avenue for friendly sledging amongst those mates. The app itself is benign, it is what people make of it, which creates the issue…