The Aussie Road Race is the prize for Australian cyclists as they get to wear the champions jersey all year long and as they go the Australian jersey is pretty decent.
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| Gerrans taking out Liege Bastogne Liege last year in his Aussie champs jersey. |
The route of the race stays consistent each year with 18 laps around Buninyong with the below profile;
The profile may not look too hard but going up that climb 18 times is hard and due to the dynamics of the australian racing it's not an easy race to call.
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| This is where Buninyong is in the expanse of Aussieland. |
Basically there are some Australian teams which have a lot of riders in the race who are responsible for controlling the race. These teams are Drapac (12 riders) and Orica Greenedge. A rider from Orica has won this race for the last few years and it is very important for them to take the Aussie jersey around all the big races through the year. However as most of you will know they are without their trump card Simon Gerrans as he fell off his mountain bike a month ago and broke his collarbone. Without this unfortunate incident Orica would be all about setting it up for Gerrans and he would have gone off evens or shorter to win. Without Gerrans Orica will look towards two riders for the final lap carnage in Cam Meyer and Simon Clarke. However if they get someone in a break, say Durbridge or Howson then they will not chase and its very likely Drapac will get someone into every break so they won't chase either. This will leave it to team BMC who have the retiring Australian legend Cadel Evans going for glory in one of his final races, they have two riders to help him; Campbell Flakemore and Rohan Dennis. Two very big engines but it might be hard for them to control a big break.
So there are three options;
- a final lap attack fest up the climb between Clarke, Meyer, Porte, Evans, Rogers and possibly Adam Hansen.
- a break stays away with some Drapac riders, some Orica riders and a scattering of other riders.
- a fast man mini sprint between say Von Hoff, Ewan, and van der Ploeg.
The most likely of these is probably a fight out between the big names, so lets look at that option first. I like Clarke here for a couple of reasons, long term Orica are going to try and set Clarke up for one day races like this and I think they have a lot of faith in him, Gerrans certainly does, he had a quiet year in 2014 but did a lot of work for the team. He has a good sprint, certainly faster than everyone apart from maybe Evans in that group, and he is a brilliant descender which in tricky weather conditions could be useful. I think Meyer will attack early and Dennis/Flakemore will drag him in then he works for Clarke. Then it will be Porte who will go really hard as he only wins solo. Porte's lack of sprint means I think Evans or Clarke are the most likely victors in this scenario. Who knows what shape Evans is in, although I imagine its pretty good as he's always been an absolute pro but at 4/1 he's a bit short. So it's Clarke for me in this scenario.
I'm also backing Nathan Earle as although unmentioned previously in this blog, he is a talent and a team mate of Porte's at Sky. The way Sky works is that these young riders basically get almost no opportunity to shine so he should be keen here, he should try and get into a break and get a free ride from Orica/Drapac riders, alternatively he could do a Meyer style early attack. At 100/1 he is too large a price to ignore.
From the fast man option I have gone with van der Ploeg, 4th here in 2013 he was climbing well recently and is under the radar enough to surprise. Von Hoff is a good option and always goes well but he will be so isolated it's hard to see who takes him to the line. Ewan should be in the role of domestique for the more established Orica riders. So I've taken a small bet of van der Ploeg at 150s.
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| Simon Clarke winning a stage, hopefully to be repeated in the small hours of Sunday! |
BETS:
1pt Simon Clarke to WIN 18/1 Bet365.
0.2pts ew Nathan Earle EW 100/1 various.
0.1pts ew Neil van der Ploeg 150/1 various.
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