Australian Olympic road cycle team named

Stuart O’Grady has been named for his sixth Olympics and Cadel Evans his fourth in Australia’s powerful road cycling team for the London Olympics.

O’Grady and Evans were named on Monday alongside Matt Goss, Simon Gerrans and Michael Rogers in a team packed with experience and success.

While O’Grady has one Olympic gold medal and Evans begins the defence of his Tour de France title this week, sprint king Goss won silver at last year’s world titles and will be Australia’s best chance in London if the race comes down to a dash for the finish.

Gerrans won this year’s Milan-San Remo Classic and is another chance in the road race, while Roger has won three world individual time trial titles.

All five will ride the road race, while Rogers and Evans will also compete in the time trial.

“This has been one of the most difficult team selections in Australia’s cycling history because we really have enough talent to field two teams of Olympic standard,” said Australian professional men’s coordinator and Athens Olympian Matt White.

“The selectors have chosen a team based on our race strategies for London – but we won’t be going into detail about what those strategies are for obvious reasons.

“What I can say is that we’re definitely in the hunt to challenge for the top step of the podium.”

The riders are currently with their professional teams preparing for the Tour de France that starts this weekend in Belgium.

“The riders will come together the day after the Tour to prepare as a team,” White said.

“It will just be a matter of maintaining the form they’ll have from the three weeks of racing in France.”

In the women’s event, Australia will have three Olympic debutantes, Shara Gillow, Chloe Hosking and Amanda Spratt.

Gillow will contest both the road race and time trial.

The men’s 250km road race will be staged on the first day of Olympic competition on July 28 and will be followed by the women’s 140km race the following day.