Richie Porte has given the best indication yet that he has shaken off the illnesses which plagued his 2014 season.
Competing yesterday in one of the strongest individual time trial fields ever seen at the Australian national road cycling championships, the Tasmanian edged out fellow favourites Rohan Dennis and Jack Bobridge to take the gold medal.
In fact, the field was so strong that the Orica-GreenEDGE trio of Michael Hepburn, Luke Durbridge and Damien Howson all missed out on the podium despite filling the top three spots last year.
While it is too early to declare Orica-GreenEDGE’s recent dominance of the road nationals to be over, Porte’s showing against the clock has edged him to overall race favouritism for Sunday’s road race title.
When asked if he could ‘do the double’ like Durbridge did two years ago by winning both the time trial and the road race, Porte replied, “I’d like too, although it might be a little hard to fly under the radar now.
“I’d like to enjoy this (win) for the moment but tomorrow at eight o’clock I’m back out on the road bike for three and a half hours. Sunday (for the road race) will be a bit more of a lottery, we’ll see how the race plays out, but I can take confidence from this and if that doesn’t work out then I still have one jersey and then a great team for the Tour Down Under. Bring it on!”
For Porte, the win was a culmination of hard work and improving health.
“I haven’t done a good time trial on a course like this for a long time but the team and I have done a lot of work on my time trial position. I’m absolutely thrilled to have this jersey to ride with in Europe, the national time trial championship jersey, it’s just exciting.”
Less excited about what was going on around him was runner-up Dennis, who was lying on the ground in a marquee behind the presentation area struggling to recover.
The young BMC rider had pushed himself to the very limit over the strenuous course to finish just eight seconds behind Porte, but afterwards felt dizzy and light headed, delaying the presentations for some time.
“It was just a little bit of over exertion,” he explained later. “I needed a little bit of time to get some sugars back into myself and probably the shock of going that deep this time of year is a little bit out of the ordinary for the body.
“I think I probably went out a little bit too hard. From my own calculations at the halfway point I’m pretty sure I was up on Richie, and he came home obviously a lot harder than me. So I’ve got a little work to do on the pacing side of things.”
Porte finished the 40.9 kilometre course in 51:50, 8 seconds ahead of Dennis, and 27 seconds up on third placed Bobridge. Former two-time winner Luke Durbridge was fourth at 1:12.
While the men’s race was a high calibre shoot-out, the women’s race was soured a little by the suggestion that race winner Shara Gillow used unsporting tactics.
Gillow, who is a four-time winner of the title, quickly caught the rider who had started one minute ahead of her, eventual runner-up Bridie O’Donnell.
The outspoken O’Donnell claimed that Gillow then spent the rest of the race sitting off her wheel, not close enough to be slipstreaming perhaps, but with the added advantage of being able to pace herself more easily.
“It’s very helpful to have someone to sit on on the way back (the second half of the course), so she should be ashamed of herself, a full-time professional athlete sitting on an old woman with a job like me,” said the 40-year-old after the race.
“I’ve never sat 20 metres behind a rider and not overtaken her. She obviously had a better first 14.5 kilometres than I did and it is hard to know if she would have ridden exactly the same time and the same pace if she had started five minutes before me. You never know. But it is absolutely a benefit to have someone just sitting there to chase. I don’t appreciate it but it’s a bike race and if she’s not going to get D’Qued (disqualified) then it’s within the rules.”
Gillow brushed off the claims, saying it was a situation brought on by the parcours.
“I was just riding my own race and on the other side of the road,” she said afterwards.
“I tried to pass her but I only really got the opportunity at the end to do so. I was concentrating on my own race. I caught her but I never really passed her as I was spinning out on the downhills with my 53 ring then I’d catch her again. It was a bit of a cat and mouse ride but I came back stronger in the end and managed to pass her just before the finish line.”
This was Gillow fourth win in five years, with last year’s defeat to Felicity Wardlaw being the only hiccup in her run of victories.
“I missed it last year,” she explained, “and just to wear the green and gold again is going to be great.”
Gillow finished the 29.3 kilometre course in 44:21, 1:01 ahead of O’Donnell, with Taryn Heather third at 1:09.
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