It is strangely exciting to be in Australia in the midst of a cycling event and to be part of such excitement.  I really never thought it would happen.  I currently spend a great deal of time organizing European trips that give my guests the sense of excitement and experience that is European Cycling.

Just about anyone who has ever worn lycra is here along with many that haven’t.  South Australia celebrates, making this event the success it is.    

We drove over to SA after the National championships and as expected GreenEdge cleaned-up, as they should have.  The sheer numbers on the road gave the team a huge advantage in the events that they won but they had to work hard, Simon’s win was courageous, he fought to the line.  At the men’s criterium however where their team presence was in line with other’s, the results were not forthcoming and the local boys won hands down.

Sitting back on the verandah of the Stag Hotel in Adelaide last night with Oakley we watched the TdU Classic.  This event and the final stage of criterium are particularly fast leaving many of the unseasoned riders coughing and spluttering particularly the Europeans, as many of the locals have had some fast racing in the Jayco Bay Crits.

Green Edge made a display of the criterium but not much else, the lead out trains were not black and green with a final victory to a favorite of the locals Andre Greipal.

As for Nathan Hass, great performance being in the nine man break for most of the race!

Back to the Nationals, there has been a definite change of guard in the ranks when considering the results of the time-trial.  Our time-trial elders ex World Champion Mick Rogers and Adam Hanson are now playing second fiddle to the new generation of endurance trackies, Luke Durbridge and Cameron Meyer.  No doubt Jack Bobridge would have been in the mix if he didn’t get caught up in the vortex of a b-double that has since eliminated him from the the Tour down Under.

Sitting back in Adelaide having a sunny lunch in Glenelg I caught glimpses of the pros rolling around the malls, relaxed and enjoying the attention before the serious matters of the week commence.  It is nice these days to be a little anonymous and have a quiet laugh at the antics of the youthful peleton.    

Once the serious business of racing begins, and the selected rider’s early season form is exposed the outcomes will be interesting.  There is a lot at stake, for all the teams, poll position in future races, critics of management and team selection, careers on the cusp!  

The TdU stages are short and sweet and not too hilly, for the pro’s, sorry guy’s but these are not hard circuits and the TdU was designed this way. My old legs will test one of the circuits in the Bupa Challenge on Friday.  As my partner would attest, hard work for the mere mortals but the pro’s will eat up this circuit in a flash.

With so many fans in Adelaide enjoying the weeks festivities and all the riders enjoying the Adelaide hospitality I am looking forward to week of cycling and riding.

You should be here.  

With  New Year’s Eve hangovers barely recovered from and New Years Resolutions fading into the heat haze, Aussie riders are into final preparation mode for the National Championships.  Using the Jayco Bay Crits as a tool to sharpen their wits and their legs for the season to come many have been surprised by the interesting results.

Young 17 yr old Caleb Ewan shook up the most seasoned of the usual suspects and we are once again surprised at the depth of talent that is shaking at the cycling establishment here in Australia. Many of our seasoned Pro’s come to the Jayco Bay Series prepped and ready for an easy win, then to head to the nationals and the Tour Down Under.  Don’t you just love it when an unknown (although Caleb is current Junior World Omnium Champion) comes out and whips professional road arse?

Green Edge riders are being a little overshadowed by the ursupers and Gerry Ryan has made a late appearance at his Bay Series to see how his stable of boys and girls are going.  Interestingly, the girls have certainly done well and the women are stamping their authority on the race as well as having a say, go girls.

The holiday mode  Ryan was upbeat asked about the GreenEdge’s riders performance stating that the TdU and National Championships were a priority. We are being presented with a team of the most notable of the Australian riders for the Tour down Under but he says that a couple of them are not as fit as they would like to be, which does raise the question…. why are they on the roster?

Green Edge have a lot of work to do and I do hope that they can achieve their goals at the first of the Pro Tour events for the 2012 season.  Who will the team ride for? Sacrifices will have to be made as last years first and second place getters are now on the same team and the players will have to be cohesive in their efforts to achieve an overall team win.

Since returning from Europe in August, business and family matters have seen my fitness level ebb to an all time low and I was hoping to regain some fitness over the Christmas holiday week.  I put in a group ride on Xmas eve followed by a run and swim, an auspicious start.   The weather gods prevailed and lashed out with storm and tempest on our coastal abode on Christmas Eve, I cracked and came down with a chill which kept me off the bike for any hard efforts for most of the week.  Very frustrated, I have had a couple of sorties, but not enough to give much benefit and I really have my work cut out for me now as I am heading up a charity ride in late February which will require that this old boy get his legs into shape.

All in all it was a great Christmas with friends and family, with no power on Christmas day we had to be resourceful and after rubbing sticks together to start a camp fire we cooked up our family meal the old fashioned way. We bucketed water from the tank for the billy and short of making damper we did have our Christmas Feast.

I am off to watch the Men’s Road Race on Sunday and then onto South Australia for round two of my fitness plan.  I expect the Adelaide Hills should whip me into shape fairly fast with the Ride Like Crazy to be ticked of the riding list before the Bupa Challenge Ride later in the week.

Phil

For me there will be a little time to wind back and spend time with friends and family down the coast.  This means more time on the bike when the Great Ocean Road is ablaze in a sea of lycra.  All manner of cyclists descend to the coast for their holidays, looking to balance the Christmas cheer with some exercise and good times with friends and family.

I may have to dust off the mountain bike with the Otway Odyssey looming a little later in Summer.

I plan to head up to Ballarat for the Nationals, firstly to see GreenEdge in action and secondly to see the best there is to offer on that hard hitting circuit.

While the GreenEdge team is top-heavy with seasoned champions, there is a littering of starlets that are likely to take their chances in a personal quest for a national title.  The real interest however is likely to be how GreenEdge pull together as a team and who they are likely to ride for as they seek to eliminate all other contenders in the Green push for a win.  There is a great deal of pressure on the team to achieve this outcome and there should be a Green E champion.  The Nationals however have shown us over the years that the favorites do not necessarily come up trumps.

As the GreenEdge riders emerge from their training camp amidst the hoopla of media and perplexing songs we are hearing little about the younger stars where lerking in the shadows of the under 23 super-heros there is a foreign contingent that is getting little media attention.  Try Aidis Kruopis a Lithuania who sounds like he could develop into a forminable sprinter, especially under the wing of McEwen or then there is Pieter Weening.  This seasoned Dutch rider will most likely be the first GreenEdge rider over the high mountains this July.  He hasn’t the support to finish high up the rankings by week 3 but it will be interesting to see if the team dynamic is to support this most likely contender or an Aussie.

Cycling in Australia has finally turned full circle with the UCI granting Pro-Tour License to Green Edge.  The last few years have seen a number of attempts by various groups at obtaining this elusive licence but finally after an intense build up by the Green Edge Team the dream has been realised.

At  a recent training camp in the ACT all the riders have had a chance to meet and amongst other things discuss the season’s goals.  Australians have sat at home every July and watched the stellar performances of our favourite Aussie riders.  Year after year we seemed to  have a more and more Aussies in the peleton.  A stage win here, Green jerseys and blazes of yellow but this year we have had the ultimate result with an Aussie, Cadel Evan’s on the podium.  The work and money that went into Cadel’s victory happened a long way from Australia and Green Edge has its work cut out for itself.

Despite the stellar careers of the Stuart O’Grady’s and Robbie McEwans and a stable of talented and experienced recruits, fielding 3 teams over the season from what is realistically a mish mash of riders will be a major challenge for the Green Edge management.  The team has been forged along similar lines to that of Team Sky with a budget to match.  Sky achieved outstanding early results but they couldn’t be sustained in the second year and that team is constantly building.  We will expect great results from Green Edge and I hope they achieve them but this European/Global dream will not be easy and I hope Australians remain supportive of the endeavour as there is likely to many setbacks as the real team building begins and the younger talent develops.

For me, I would have been sceptical about joining a team such as Green Edge, it is such a risk especially for a young rider.  In my career I did make a decision to join TVM, a real risk at the time, but for me it was about control, about my destiny as a racer.  Many of the riders in Green Edge will not have control or a choice and we have seen some of the better Aussie riders not join the team as their career objectives were perhaps best considered elsewhere.  Interestingly many European teams were complaining of the prices being offered to riders to defect to Green Edge but not all took the plunge.

Without a real team leader it will interesting to see the focus and direction of the team and the Classics are certainly going to be the place to be for any Aussie cycling aficionado this Spring.  I will be there and I will watch Green Edge with interest but are we likely to see another Aussie win a great race, like Mark Renshaw who has joined Rabobank Team at a time in his career when he wants to win races and the Team can support this goal.  We are certain to celebrate with him and ponder the choices of riders in what can never really be a truly Aussie team in such a multinational sport and understand that for their own careers Aussie riders must often, like Renshaw, Cadel and Porte make decisions to ride in teams that will support their individual career objectives rather than those of a nationalistic team like Green Edge.

Hopefully Aussie riders who have made such choices will not have their own nationalistic goals dashed and not be selected for Olympic and World races because they are not part of the Green Edge hierarchy.

Overall however I am excited the most about what this means for cycling in Australia.  There is a genuine excitement.  Will a Green Edge rider win at the Nationals or will the glory be stolen from under them by a young local rider like Nathan Hass who was not going to let any pro rider stand in his way as he smashed his way to victory in the recent Jayco Herald Sun Tour.  Bobridge and Meyer could not respond.   The excitement is in the field of talent in Australia that has not made it to Green Edge, there are so many young riders trail blazing at the moment to make a name for themselves, the selected few will really have to vindicate their selection which in turn bodes well for Green Edge.

While folks are crowding the popular riding routes, it worries me that the average age of the cyclist’s that I see here are middle aged.  Short of the younger generation of cyclists who race there are limited numbers of young enthusiasts on the roads riding for health and fitness, it is a shame.

The results of the racing season past, show that Australia has become a force to be considered in the sport.  The domination of the sport by the European’s,  has ended and cycling is now  a world sport.

Over the last 20 years SBS has introduced Australians to Le Tour.  Australians are sitting up late at night watching these events in their thousands.  We are now being presented with a cavalcade of of cycling events to view from our living room and much of this is to do with the introduction of multicultural events and sports being introduced to Australians with the inception of the SBS broadcasting Chanel.

I note Phillip Gilbert was polled most popular male cyclist by Cycling News readers.  The Belgian’s popularity nearly 3 fold over our Cadel.  This at first glance may seem a little surprising.  If you step back and look at both the dominance of Gilbert over the 2011 season it is not really.  Le tour as big as it is is only one event on the cycling calendar.   In Australia while we have excellent coverage of the TdF, most of Cycling News readers would be in the US and Britain where they would not only have coverage of Le Tour, but also the classics which is where Gilbert dominated in 2012.  While Cadel rode a great Tour and blitzed the final 3 days of the July event, it was Gilbert who enthralled fans around the world with his against-all-odds riding style.  2012 will see Cadel riding with Gilbert at his side(in a few races at least) as part of a very strong BMC team.  It will be a surprise if Gilbert is wrapped in cotton wool and not allowed to race in his blazing style, we will see.

Hopefully the 100km will not be too gruelling, much easier on the road.

Looking forward to my next group ride in Melbourne on the 5th of March.  After a washout at Kew Boulevard Beach Rd should be ever reliable.

I am looking forward to my group ‘twitter’ ride at Kew Boulevard on the weekend, don’t forget to register on the website.

www.philandersoncyclingtours.com/pages/PACT-Participation-Ride/

We rode in the Community Challenge for Team Skoda and linked up with Anti Cancer foundation for a short ride at the end of the TdU.

The TdU was great, the Aussies just smashing everything.  With a Pro tour event and the prospect of an Aussie pro tour team things are looking good, such a change from my day

Ride Like Crazy tomorrow and Adelaide has turned on the weather.  This Ride is organized by the South Australia Police and is one of the best rides I have ever been on or associated with.  Should be a nice 110km, I will riding the easy options with my partner at the back.

We line up for the peoples challenge on Friday week with ‘Team Skoda’.  The Ride Like Crazy event and Team Skoda are both raising funds for cancer research and I would love to think that if you can’t ride you will donate appropriately and schedule these events into your future cycling calendar.  South Australia certainly turns it on for the Tour down Under and I would not miss it.

I’ll keep you posted during the race.

The Melbourne ride was a hoot, a little windy but great fun, good coffee and great prizes.  It is always a wonderful experience to ride Beach Road, so many people up and out early cycling.

Our next ride is in Adelaide however I will also be involved in the ‘Ride Like Crazy’ ride just before the TdU followed by the Community Challenge Ride as part of team ‘Skoda’.  Please do not hesitate to donate to either of these worthy causes on each respective website.

School has finished and I am looking forward to a couple of weeks of beach holiday with my son, nippers, surfing and riding with my Great Ocean Road friends in cycling.

Happy Christmas