Guest post: Our flatland fixation

Robert Merkel is a cycling tragic who dreams of one day repeating his glorious summit victory in the local D-grade club criterium. In his spare time, he is a lecturer at an Australian university.

Cadel Evans is an unbackable favourite to fill his bulging trophy cabinet a little further at the 2011 Australian Cyclist of the year awards on Friday, writes our guest columnist, Robert Merkel.

But as Australia's cycling establishment gathers to recognize the year's achievements, it's worth pausing for a moment to note what an anomaly Evans represents in Australia's more than 100 years of cycling tradition.

Tour de France winners are obviously the rarest of breeds. But champion Australian road cyclists have become increasingly common. Australians have won stage after stage in Grand Tours for over a decade now.

Mick Rogers' three World Championships against the clock. Stuart O'Grady has won the toughest one-day race of all, Paris-Roubaix, and Matt Goss won the sprinters' monument, Milan-San Remo - an achievement that in any other year would have earned him the Oppy.

Robbie McEwen and Baden Cooke, at their sprinting peak, were two of the fastest men in the world. In the women's peloton, Kathy Watt and Sara Carrigan's Olympic gold medals represent a proud record.

However, to the extent cycling captures the imagination of the broader Australian sporting public, it is primarily through the Tour de France.

Without Cadel Evans, however, Australia's achievements at the business end of that race, or indeed any other grand Tour, would be very thin on the ground. Phil Anderson's Tour fifth places, and the 2010 Giro D'Italia of Matthew Lloyd and Richie Porte - all fine accomplishments, but hardly at the same level as our exploits on flatter terrain. So why are there so many outstanding Australian sprinters, and so few climbers?

Rather than lack of the raw material, it's my belief that Australia's elite cycling culture plays a considerable part.

Australia's cycling establishment, with the prodding of millions of dollars of Olympics-based funding, has built one of the world's most efficient sporting development pipelines. Its purpose? To identify, nurture and develop brilliant track cyclists, many of whom later go on to become road time-trialists or sprinters. Diminuitive GC riders, whose light weight is almost meaningless on the track, aren't a priority.

Australia's domestic road scene is similarly biased towards powerful, heavier flatland riders. The annual chorus of complaints about the Australian Road Cycling Championships course ignores the fact that it is virtually the only national-level event where climbing prowess matters.

Aside from the revived Herald-Sun Tour and the Arthur's Seat climb, the only other national-level race with a mountain-top finish is Stage 2 of the Mersey Valley Tour, a low-profile race with a small, thin field. Australia's biggest one-day classics, too, are races for hardmen and sprinters rather than climbers.

And now, we have GreenEdge, the logical endpoint for a cycling establishment geared so much to sprinters. The entire roster is geared to dragging any one of their half a dozen sprinters to the line.

A logical progression from our historic strengths as a cycling nation? Sure. A way to win a lot of races, if not necessarily high-profile ones? Without doubt. A good pathway for the next Cadel Evans, should there be one among our hugely talented crop of young riders? That's a stretch.

GreenEdge is, of course, a private organization whose backers can pursue whatever strategy they deem the best use of their dollar. But, given its intimate ties with Cycling Australia and its talent development pathway, I have to wonder whether Australia's cycling establishment are focusing even more narrowly on track riders who become flatland fast men and women.

This is not to denigrate the wonderful achievements of our track teams, nor those who follow in the footsteps of the likes of McEwen and O'Grady.

But I wonder if a little bit more care and feeding of our young mountain goats - with some specialized coaching and a few more national-level races where they have a chance to shine - might just help to find that next special talent who dances up the impossible slopes, while the flatlanders grind away in the grupetto.