Neve Bradbury late withdrawal from Women’s Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race

Neve Bradbury looked set to be one of the key contenders in a strong Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto squad at the Women’s Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race on Saturday but when the team headed to the waterside sign-on in Geelong they were one member short, illness meant the 22-year-old Australian would have to sit this one out. 

Bradbury, who came eighth overall at the Tour Down Under and fourth on the Willunga Hill stage, had already sat out the new 1.1 ranked Surf Coast Classic on Wednesday and unfortunately wasn’t quite ready to get back out there.

“She wasn’t 100% well before Wednesday’s race, and so we’d made the decision to not start there,” sports director Beth Duryea told Cyclingnews just before the race started. “Since she’s also not 100% recovered – it’s just like a small sort of cold, basically – we just said, ‘OK, it’s not, it’s not the time of year to be really pushing and forcing’, even though we knew that actually she could do really well in this race, and it would be good for our team plan if she was here.