Cycling Weekly – July 25, 2019

12 | July 25, 2019 | Cycling Weekly

It seemed as though it was your standard

Tour de France stage. Then as the peloton

approached the feed station of stage 12 with

80 kilometres to go, Rohan Dennis

voluntarily stepped off his bike and got into

his soigneur’s car. He was taken to the finish

and when his sports directors tried to speak

with him he said he didn’t want to talk.

This led to a media scrum outside the

team bus in Bagnères-de-Bigorre, where

head sports director Gorazd Štangelj said:

“We’re also confused. I’m disappointed

about what happened with Rohan today

because we expected the effort from him

tomorrow [in the TT] It was his decision to

stop today in the feed zone. We tried to

speak with him. We stopped the car and

tried to find a solution to what’s going on,

but he just said, ‘I don’t want to talk,’ and

abandoned the race.”

John Allert, managing director at

McLaren Pro Cycling, one of the team’s

partners, gave an enigmatic explanation for

the Australian’s departure.

“It would be wrong to try and pinpoint

just one reason that Rohan withdrew, it’s

a lot more complicated and a lot more

sensitive than that,” Allert said. “There is

an accumulation of different factors. I’m

not going to go into the detail of any of

those factors, because we’re still seeking to

understand those. But if Rohan doesn’t feel

that he can perform, I have to respect that.”

TOUR COLUMN

LUKE DURBRIDGE

SHOCK DEPARTURE

I

’m writing this aboard the party

bus following Simon Yates’s

second stage win of the week.

Earlier we pulled up at a

service station and they didn’t

have any alcohol there, which was a bit

of a problem. So we had to stop at a

Buffalo Grill and ask for a stack of beers

and some bottles of wine, which they

couldn’t quite understand.

It was a sufferfest for me today but

it makes it all worth while when at

3km to go you know Simon has taken

the stage.

At the back end of the race there is

the race to make time cut. That’s where

I am most of the time. There’s always

someone on a bad day or someone who is

pretty tired or something went wrong — a

couple of guys that don’t want to talk. Then

there’s always another couple of guys that

have chosen to be in the grupetto and

they’re just tapping away chatting and

pushing the pace and they are the

most annoying people possible.

Plus the sprinters like

to have a game among

themselves and if

another rider is on a

bad day they’ll push

the pace a little more just to hurt them. You

never really know exactly what’s going on

with all these games.

It’s been up and down this last week.

Adam falling out of GC contention the

other day was a bit gutting — we didn’t

plan for that to happen. Honestly, we

know these GC guys, they are another

breed and it’s something I don’t envy to

be on it every single day. They are genetic

freaks really, we understand we work

for them and give them the opportunity

and as long as they give it everything,

which we know our guys do, then

there’s not much more you can ask.

After that you have to reassess; we

had still won two stages at that point. Our

sports director Matt White gave us a big

Any Given Sunday-style speech, like: “Are

we going to lie down? No, hell no. What are

we going to do today then?” And we all

came off the bus charged up ready to go.

Then we worked really hard to get Jack or

Simon in the break and Simon got in

there and finished off the job,

such a class act.

■ Australian Luke

Durbridge is riding the

Tour de France for

Mitchelton-Scott

Rohan Dennis leaves Tour in “complicated

and sensitive” abandonment

Welcome to the party bus