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Luke Plapp clearly relished the opportunity to launch into his first year as a professional with the jersey of the Australian national champion on his back and he is not willing to hand it over easily when he lines up to chase the title again on a hot Sunday afternoon in Buninyong. The road race had been a clear target in the 22-year-old’s Australian summer, but plans don’t always run smoothly.
”I was feeling really good and confident just before Christmas,” Plapp told Cyclingnews earlier this week. But then came what he described as “a pretty nasty crash in training.”
That crash, Plapp said, left him with a lot of skin off, but could have been a lot worse. It kept him off the bike for a week shortly before the season was soon to begin with the Citroën Bay Crits. There he worked hard to control the field and keep the pace high to discourage attacks in support of his teammate, Brenton Jones. It worked, with his teammate heading into retirement with a final treasured victory, but it also did more than that.
“The Bay Crits was sort of to see where I was at and try to cram some last minute training in,” said Plapp, who enjoyed the proximity of the Great Ocean Road for pre-race efforts before the criterium racing in Geelong. “But I’m really looking forward to Nationals. I think potentially I’ll be a little bit underdone just because of that crash but hopefully for the Tour Down Under and UAE Tour, I’ll be a bit better.
“But I still feel like I’m going OK.”
Plapp will be facing up to a stacked field at Nationals, however and with no teammates to help him out – will ‘OK’ be good enough?
“It’s gonna be a brilliant race,” said Plapp. “To be honest, I’ve been racking my brain for the last two weeks on how to win or even how the race might go. There’s everyone there, which is so amazing, and I wish I was a spectator and just watching the race unfold as it is going to be quite amazing to see.”
The two years where entry to Australia was hindered and international races in the nation were cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic means that the riders who were absent as a result have all come flooding back after two years of missed opportunity.
That has presented an interesting challenge, as its a course itself that leads to a degree of unpredictability as the climb of Mount Buninyong Road on every one of the 16 laps of the 185.6km race provides a serious challenge for the sprinters, but that doesn’t make it a shoe-in for the climbers either…
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