So let’s talk about the men's road race at Australian Road Nationals last weekend that proved to be so controversial. The biggest shame of it all is that the world cycling media is talking about how Jayco AlUla messed it up, meanwhile nobody is giving due credit to Team Brennan – a small local Continental team with incredibly talented cyclists, from gold medalists (Oliver Bleddyn, and Conor Leahy) to WorldTour riders (Patrick Eddy, formerly at Picnic-PostNL).
Apparently Jayco’s plan from the beginning was to race for the break to put themselves in a winning position, and then have Plapp staying fresh as their backup if it came back together.
First off, from a pure power perspective, it was certainly on the lower end of races and even bunch rides that I’ve done in the past. I think the heat really got to people out there, especially me – it was over 40 °C (104 ºF) on the road for much of the day – and riders were probably a little bit hesitant to push themselves too hard. We raced hard for the first couple of laps, and then it was certainly easy to sit in the peloton as the break extended their gap.
When you look at the numbers, last year's race for most finishers was around 350 normalized watts, whereas this year I was a lot closer to that 300 W mark. This is important, because it’s why more riders were fresher at the end, especially when the clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped.
Speaking to riders throughout the race, there was a huge division between riders that were finding it relatively easy and feeling fresh, and riders like myself that were in all sorts, suffering in the heat.
Because there were fewer kilojoules burned throughout the day, the final effort on that last climb – about two minutes above 550 watts for those at the front – riders didn't unload the way they usually would. If you were heat-adapted, you wouldn't have found it that bad, relatively speaking. That was the real difference; it meant Pat Eddy was able to follow Plapp up the final climb where he took the win.
At one point in the race, a Jayco rider came up to me and said they’d been given the green light to work with climbers. If he got away with someone like me, he was actually able to work to get back in the race, as long as it wasn't a big threat to the win. This told me that the Jayco unit had been given permission to race for podium positions.
A team error
Let’s be clear. In my opinion, if Jayco, collectively as a team, had raced to perfection on that last lap, Durbridge would have won. None of them – Rudy Porter, Kell O'Brien, Ben O'Connor, or Plapp – should have ever touched the wind on that last lap. They should have all been following anyone that went and just killing the moves.
Did we do a good job with this story?
