Five years ago Cameron Meyer was one of the bright young stars in the Australian cycling constellation. Unfortunately shooting stars seldom shine the longest and 2015 looms as a year that defines his trajectory.
Will he consolidate as a reliable World Tour competitor, or be scrambling for a place back in Continental ranks?
Almost as soon as he turned a crank in anger, Meyer lit up the cycling world. He was Australian Junior Madison champion in 2005, and then quickly collected seven World and Australian Junior track jerseys in 2006. Pursuits, Madisons and Points races were his domain.
In 2009 Meyer was signed by canny talent scout Jonathan Vaughters to ride for Garmin Slipstream. He continued to excel on the track but increasingly looked toward the the roads of Europe for his future.
Meyer’s next stellar burst of form came in 2010. He won three World Championship jerseys on the track, his first Australian Time Trial on the road, and three golds in the 2010 Commonwealth Games track team in India. Watching that New Delhi points race, even from the comfort of an Australian armchair, it was obvious that Meyer was in a league of his own. The rest of the peloton seemed to circulate the velodrome in slow motion as Meyer confidently racked up points and imperiously lapped the field, not once but three times.
With the results, expectations rose. Commentators and coaches alike nodded their heads at Meyer’s strengths and anointed him to follow in the tyre tracks of Cadel Evans as the next Aussie Grand Tour general classification contender.
Following that script nicely, Meyer won the 2011 Tour Down Under, backed up his National time trial win and continued his winning ways on the track. Little wonder he was one of the first riders snapped up by the fledgling Orica-GreenEDGE squad.
Since then the glow has flickered slightly. Measuring success depends on what your expectations are. If you’ve pegged Meyer as a solid workhorse, with a good engine for time trailing and versatility in lumpy terrain, then you’d give him a tick.
But if you’ve got the headlines of 2011 still lodged in the back of your mind, you’d be disappointed by his palmarès of the last three years. Yep, there’s the stage win in the 2014 Tour de Suisse. There’s been a couple of stirring team time trial wins in Grand Tours, but otherwise Meyer’s climbing has strictly been on the bike, and hasn’t included enough podium steps.
I wonder how team bosses Shayne Bannon and Matt White see him? If they are still holding onto a dream of Meyer rallying the squad and winning stages in Europe, I suspect there’s a question mark pencilled next to his name on the team sheet – if not a red line in texta.
Cameron has already lost the company of his brother Travis, who was cut from Orica-GreenEDGE after only two years. He is no doubt being given new roles to fulfil in the team – less glorious jobs than he may have been hoping for a couple of years ago. What you and I can’t know is how Meyer works behinds the scenes, back in the bunch where the TV cameras don’t go. If he’s got the grit and the guts to be an invaluable domestique I’m sure his place is secure and the team will prosper.
Early predictions of success are often unrealistic, and the pressure it brings can unduly affect an athlete’s future. If they fail to live up to the hype, some cyclists adjust well to the reality of life back in the pack, but some don’t. It all depends how Cameron Meyer sees Cameron Meyer.
The 2010 Commonwealth Games Points race sticks in my mind for reasons beyond Meyer’s powerful win. The field also included an 18-year-old Simon Yates, who on that steamy night in India crawled home in second-last place, but last year joined Meyer at Orica-GreenEDGE.
Now young Yates is one of the team’s best hopes for GC honours, rather than his senior counterpart. How quickly the wheel turns.
Don
Roar Rookie
Twitter @cammeyercyclist: Very happy to get the win in today's @HeraldSunTour stage. Tough day out and some awesome team work from the @ORICA_GreenEDGE guys. Nice work!
Wombat
Roar Rookie
He actually had a stage win in both the 2014 and 2013 Tours de Suisse which are counted as WT wins. His best GC finishes in one week tours during his OGE stint have been 10th at 2013 Tour de Suisse and 5th at both 2013 Tour of California and Tour of Turkey. The latter are NOT WT events but can still see some strong fields and involve some significant climbing. Illness DID make some major inroads into his 2014 race season. In all honesty, Meyer is not going to be a GT GC contender, not is he likely to ever be a mega-star. Could he win individual stages at GTs - quite likely, he's already had a close run or two. One week races - he's shown that he can win stages; high finishes and some decent WT points. One suspects he's already re-calibrated his own expectations with regards to his future roles. He's shown an ability and willingness to do the "grunt work" for others in key races. He is also a key component in TTTs which are a part in at least 2 of the 3 years GTs and the World TTT Championship also brings large WT points for win/podiums. One suspects that he would find a home at other WT teams. Might we be saying the same or similar in a couple of years with Rohan Dennis ? He's shown himself to be potentially an elite level ITTer but as yet t's unproven whether he can climb with the elite/GT contenders over a 3 week GT. That remains to be established. The Yates twins look to be potentially top level climbers but, to date, their TT skills remain a significant deficit.
Don
Roar Rookie
On reflection his work for the team during the TDU looked solid, especially on the Willunga stage. That suggests he's in a good place. I hope so. My own feeling is he's a good rider who deserves to keep a spot in OGE. The demands of the pro tour are such a step up from Continental or track. Young stars are always over hyped and I don't think their failure to live up to expectation is necessarily about other guys doping at the top level. Certainly not like it once was. Young tyros stumbling in the big league is simply a fact of life common to all pro sports. I feel sad for Bobo. If rising cycling talent was once cheated and snuffed out by rivals that doped, now even in a ''clean'' era fans like Bobo are still being cheated from trusting and enjoying the sport we love. Even if Meyer doesn't 'need' a win I hope he gets one if only for his own confidence.
dahondude
Guest
Yeah I too wonder in this "post-doping" era (if it really is a post-doping era) whether we will start to see a lot of this kind of thing...young guys with great promise who just never manage to break through into the big time. There's a growing list of Aussies in this category, and one wonders if the same is happening in the domestic scene in other countries. Maybe its a good thing?
Bobo
Guest
Hard to succeed if you don't dope.
zzimmzamm
Guest
Great article, and in a word "yes". I think back to his Tour Down Under victory several years ago, and without diminishing what was a great victory, at the end of the day it was a function of the peloton misjudging the breakaway into Strathalbyn. His gain that day was 24 seconds (or therabouts) and he only ended up winning the overall by two seconds. It was also a year when Stage 5 finished in the township of Willunga and there were no other real mountaintop test; most stages coming to a bunch sprint. However that all being said, who am I as a cycling hack when compared to these pros, to question their ability and palmares. Each one of them, can ride like us mere mortals would love to be able to do. I hope he turns his form around, and/or be given opportunity within the team to progress without the weight of too much expectation.
Andrew Graham
Roar Rookie
There's loads of question marks about Cam Meyer really, especially with the Yates boys working it and Robert Power et al in the wings.