Watch the Elite Men’s Road Race live broadcast on SBS from 1.30pm AEDT, or catch up with the post-race highlights and replay on SBS On Demand.
There have been great Australian cyclists that have never won the Australian Nationals Road Race, and it takes a concerted effort from even the top professionals to come back from overseas and have enough form to see off the domestic riders that make this one of their main goals of the season.
Defending champion Luke Plapp (INEOS Grenadiers) is on everyone’s lips as the man to beat, but will he be able to repeat with everyone wary of his talents?
The Course
The 185.6km course takes in 16 Laps of the Mt Buninyong circuit, a course that has mostly produced wins for solo riders and small groups that form over the top of Mt Buninyong.
You have to be able to climb really well, and often the winners are the professionals who journey back to Australia for the summer of cycling, or are some of the best up-and-coming talent on the domestic scene.
The Mt Buninyong climb is well-known within the Australian cycling community, a three-kilometre climb that has ramps of up to 10 per cent, but is mostly difficult due to the repeated efforts round and round the course over the race.
Mt Buninyong Road Race Course
The forecast shows the wind swinging about during the afternoon, from a northerly to a southwesterly, and when that happens will have a significant impact on the how the race pans out. It looks like it will be a tailwind by the final laps, if the forecast can be relied upon.
The day will be a hot one, with temperatures in the mid 30s, and the men will have to tough it out, especially if they are less heat-acclimatised with some regions of Australia not reaching that temperature much so far this summer.
The Contenders
Luke Plapp (INEOS Grenadiers) is deservedly the favourite heading into the race after two years in a row of spectacular rides on the Mt Buniyong course. In 2021, he was building an almost impossible lead, which proved too hard to hold when he blew up spectacularly. 2022 proved to be the happy medium when he launched his winning move a lot later, overtaking James Whelan on the final lap on the steepest part of the climb to solo to victory.
Word is that Plapp’s been training well in the lead-up to the race, and everyone on the Victorian racing scene is predicting a double for Plapp in the road race and time trial.
Nine riders take the startline for Jayco-AlUla, and that strength in numbers may be the bane of Plapp and the other one-out riders from the professional ranks. The Australian WorldTour team has shown that they like to be proactive with their numbers by putting riders into the break of the day and seeing how the tactics work out from there.
Michael Matthews is back in Australia and looking to make the most of his time here. He was out and about at the crits and got in on the celebrations with Kell O’Brien and Blake Quick after the finish line. He’s clearly saved his legs for the road race, and on paper it appears the perfect course for the Australian superstar.
It will be the Canberran’s first Road Nationals appearance since 2014. Matthews has been one of the most-decorated Australian cyclists of his generation, but hasn’t won a national road title at any level.
New Jayco-AlUla squad addition Chris Harper has a love-hate relationship with nationals, he's done some brilliant moves here and looked the winner on a few occasions, but it's never quite worked out. With more riders in his corner, perhaps this year is the one.
O’Brien, Lucas Hamilton and the evergreen Luke Durbridge will likely be the other riders that Jayco-AlUla will look to put in winning positions, all three have shown that they can get around the Nationals course well with podium rides or in Durbridge’s case, a win, in the past.
Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates) has been a revelation of recent years in his ascension to the WorldTour peloton, winning Vuelta stages and showing that he should start to be considered among the best climbers in the world. He prefer the climbs in this race to be longer, and he doesn’t have the best history in this event, but he’s clearly come back to Australia with the intention of riding well, and he definitely has the capacity to win.
Stage racing star Ben O’Connor (AG2R Citroen) has plenty of positive rumours coming out of Western Australia around his current form. Like Vine, he’d prefer the course to be a bit harder and less punchy, as he’ll need to go to the finish line solo or with one or two other riders.
Kane Richards (ARA Skip Capital) is the National Road Series champion for a reason and he’ll be looking to show it against the pros on Sunday. The lanky figure of Richards has been prominent in this race before from the breakaway, when fourth last year, and he’s only gotten stronger since then.
James Whelan needs to make every post a winner from here if he wants to make it back to the professional ranks after a few frustrating seasons that saw the Victorian just miss out on deals a few years running in professional contract roulette. The right mix of climber and rouleur for this course, Whelan has made it a big goal to win this event, try to force his way onto the Tour Down Under Australian national team en route to a return to the pros.
As a former business-owning electrician, new father and part-time cyclist, Brendan ‘Trekky’Johnston, was a formidable rider for even the most accomplished professionals to beat. Now with the sale of his business, Trekky is reportedly in full training mode for nationals and the endurance mountain biker could very well win this race now that he’s got even more effort focused on it. Third last year was a taste of the podium, the top step could beckon this time around.
Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) is reportedly suffering from a bug of some kind at present, and he looked like he was blowing hard when heading out the back of the peloton during the criterium. It will be a tight turnaround on a course not suited to his talents. He was a good deal lighter when he finished 2nd in this race back in 2015, he’s bulked up since to be more effective in the sprints.
Top domestic squad Team Bridgelane bring the largest contingent of ten riders and they will certainly have an impact on the race. Any breakaway without at least one of their riders present is destined to be chased all day by a strong team, so the likely combination that gets an early lead will either have no riders of consequence or a healthy Bridgelane participation. Alastair Christie-Johnston, Elliot Schultz, Rhys Robotham and Tristan Saunders look to be their best riders on this course, and they will be most dangerous from a breakaway scenario, though Saunders also packs a solid sprint.
Chris Hamilton and neo-pro Matt Dinham (both Team DSM) make an interesting pair, Hamilton has been steadily improving across the course of his career, mostly as a highly-valued domestique, but he’ll get to show his talents alongside exciting talent Dinham.
There are a number of other professionals who could liven up the race, Simon Clarke (Israel Premier Tech), Lachlan Morton (EF Education) and Jarrad Drizners (Lotto Soudal) look to be the most likely candidates.
Out of the domestic riders that could surprise Jesse Coyle has been putting out some impressive power recently in Sydney, stalwart Mark O’Brien is rarely far away from the front of the race at nationals, and Lionel Mawditt (St George Continental) has been good here in recent years.
There are riders of a different kind joining the road specialists, Australia’s premier mountain biker Dan McConnell always gives himself a chance around the nationals course, and Australian Superbikes star Troy Herfoss is again swapping engine power for leg power.
Watch the Elite Men’s Road Race live broadcast on SBS from 1.30pm AEDT, or catch up with the post-race highlights and replay on SBS On Demand.
