The time trials have been run and won at the 2022 UCI Road World Championships and now the attention is turning toward this weekend’s road races across New South Wales and the pitfalls and opportunities of the challenging parcours.
There will be no cruisy procession to a large bunch finish, but 169.8km for the elite/U23 women and 266.9km for the men of challenging terrain. The climbs aren’t long, but in the later part of the race they just keep coming, with the 2,433 metres of ascent for the women and 3,945 metres for the men, the accumulated fatigue is bound to start weighing long before the finish line is in sight.
The elite/U23 women and elite men work their way from a Helensburgh start, taking the tricky descent down to the coast in neutral before winding south to Wollongong via the spectacular SeaCliff Bridge, which perhaps could get a little windy.
It’s after the course reaches Wollongong that the obstacles begin to be thrown forth with increasing regularity. First the Mount Keira loop takes the field inland and up the Illawarra escarpment to the climb the loop is named after and then it is back to Wollongong again for the city circuit. The women, who race Saturday, take on six laps and then on Sunday the men tackle the heavy loop, with Mount Pleasant as its centrepiece, 12 times.
Across the course, there are a number of pinch points that could make or break the race. We take a closer look at these with Australian team member Amanda Spratt – who has twice been on the podium at the Road World Championships and hails from near the Wollongong course – along with former top sprint lead-out rider Mark Renshaw, who knows the course inside out given his role as Wollongong 2022 safety manager.
Mount Keira – ‘The pain begins at Hurt Street’
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“The first part to the bottom of Mount Keira here will just be a pretty standard approach in a World Championships,” said Renshaw. “They’ll let a break go, they’ll slowly start to wind them back in. Mount Keira, I think is where we’ll see everybody get a little bit…
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