In a peloton of sprinters sporting short haircuts, Sam Welsford with his loose locks and manicured moustache stands out at the Tour de France.
“I shaved it off after the classics season, but I was, ‘you know what, the Tour, I’m going to bring it back’,” Welsford said of his tidy ‘stache.
“I was talking to Marco Haller [Bora-Hansgrohe] about it because he’s rocking a ‘mo’ as well. “It’s something different. Every cyclist looks the same.”
Styling, however, is not the Australian sprinter’s only point of difference at the Tour, where he is making his race debut with Team dsm-firmenich, having transitioned from the track to WorldTour last season.
Welsford is a decorated Olympian and represented Australia in Rio in 2016, at the Tokyo Games, and wants to add the Paris 2024 Olympic Games to his palmares next year, too.
After the Tour, the 27-year-old is set to compete at the UCI Track World Championships in Scotland in August and, if all goes to plan, the Paris Olympic Games where Australia hope to claim the gold medal in the men’s team pursuit.
“It’s the only one I don’t have,” Welsford told Cyclingnews at the Tour de France. “I’ve got a silver [Rio] and bronze [Tokyo], so I’m still chasing that gold. Maybe Paris will be the one.”
Welsford’s experience on the track has been beneficial at the Tour, making his debut somewhat less daunting.
“You learn to handle the pressure of the big events from the Olympics. It teaches you to treat it like any other race,” he said.
“Yeah, it can be the Tour de France, it’s the pinnacle of the sport on the road, but it’s the same guys you race all year; it’s just at the highest level, and you have to keep that in the back of your mind that, yeah, it might be a bit nervous because it’s more people, more stress, more media and stuff, but it’s the same guys you race, the same sprinters we sprint against, but it means a lot more when you cross that line I guess.”
And he believes the race, in which he has another shot at line honours on Wednesday’s stage 11 from Clermont-Ferrand to Moulins will also aid his track goals.
“I have the ambition to go to Worlds quite soon after the Tour finishes,” he said.
“Hopefully things going well, with how my fatigue is after the Tour, and how I’m feeling, but I definitely would like to go and do the team pursuit again because I still have ambitions to do the Olympics next year in Paris. The team pursuit is the main focus, and then if we can get a bunch race in there it would really nice, like the Omnium. I…
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