Squad
- Jesse Coyle
- Moosh Brown
- Chris Miller
- Peter Ritskes
- DS1: Daniel Van Der Laan
- DS2: Donncha Redmond
DS Report
This weekend was to be my first helping out the Men’s Team at a race since taking over as SUVelo’s Race Director, and doing so at an NRS-level race was a bit daunting. Qualifications for the role consisted of many years watching the Tour, the Giro and the Vuelta live, plus the Monuments, Pais Vasco, the Dauphiné, Romandie, Tour of Turkey and anything else Eurosport were happy to broadcast. Practical racing experience? The odd crit at Heffron! Thankfully I had Dan on hand to guide me tell me what to do. Dan had the slight advantage of
a) having done DS for a few races already,
b) having recently raced with the squad before an injury sidelined him,
c) being a qualified physio, and
d) being coach to most of the squad!
I was in good hands 🙂
Friday morning saw me fire up the trusty Hyundai and swing by to pick up Moosh for the drive to Canberra. He was a bit concerned that there was no roof rack for his bike but there was plenty of room in the boot and I’d brought spare towels to keep it adequately swaddled. Traffic out of Sydney was surprisingly light and we made good time to the coffee rendezvous at Suttons Forest, where Moosh swapped with Dan who proceeded to fill me in on how stuff works in the NRS for the remainder of the journey.
Stage 1 was due to start at midday with a 7km ITT, so first DS duty of the weekend for myself and Dan was to meet the Chief Commissaire and get our team’s transponders and race numbers. That done, we had time for a quick bite to eat before returning to meet the guys at the TT course. Next step was to set up trainers for warm-up and fit transponders and race numbers to the bikes, followed by nabbing a spare front and rear wheel to go in the follow car and pumping them to correct pressure. Moosh was our first rider to start at 12:44 with Pete, Jesse and Chris following at roughly 20min intervals, which meant we’d be able to follow everyone with one car.
I brought the car up towards the start line and waited in line until Moosh reached the start ramp, then it was a case of watching the countdown and we were off. The course started flat, then long downhill, shorter uphill to the turnaround, then the same in reverse; short downhill, long uphill, into a headwind, then drag to the finish. Not sure of correct protocol I maintained a respectful distance, shouted the odd bit of encouragement out the window and completely forgot to switch on the GoPro. Moosh got caught by his minute man, so I had to pull over towards the end to get out of his way.
Pete didn’t want a follow car, so Jesse was up next. Dan joined me in the passenger seat and proceeded to show me the correct protocol by hanging out the window, constantly shouting encouragement and instructions along with grabbing some video footage for the evening’s stage report. While following Chris, we saw how it should be done, with the Avanti-Isowhey DS calmly sitting in the car issuing instructions to his rider over loudspeaker just like the pros 🙂
None of the riders were particularly happy with their efforts, with the headwind catching everyone out on pacing, it taking roughly 4:40 to get to the turnaround and 7:00 – 8:00 to get back. From a DS point of view, following a rider on a downhill with 100km/hr indicated on the speedo was a bit nerve-wracking!
Results
Jesse 11:41
Chris 12:11
Pete 12:32
Moosh 12:54
Race over, the riders headed back to our AirBnB while myself and Dan did the groceries, getting food to cook dinner, stuff for breakfast plus some mini-Cokes and water to have in the car in case the riders wanted them during the remaining stages. Dan cooked everyone dinner, I did the washing up, then it was early to bed ready for a 6am start the next day.
