The second World Tour event of the year took place in the early hours of Sunday morning, and it produced the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race with it's first ever home winner. Jay McCarthy secured his first win in over two years from a reduced bunch sprint ahead of Elia Viviani and Daryl Impey. The race in general was pretty interesting with the last lap featuring a lot of attacking riding.
Impey's form
After winning the Tour Down Under last week Daryl Impey carried his form from South Australia to Victoria. Helped by a convincing attack by team mate Esteban Chaves over the final climb of the day, Impey was always where he needed to be. Possibly caught out by McCarthy sprinting from so far out but there's not much you can do when someone is able to hold that top speed for so long.
Viviani a serious threat for San Remo
Elia Viviani is a fast bike rider of that there is no doubt, but last season he finished with some tremendously strong rides at one day races. His second half of last season included wins at the Hamburg Cyclaclassic and the Bretagne Classic, the latter of which is a tough race (previous winners include Nibali, Gerrans, Kristoff, Pozzato), as well as stages of the Tour of Britain, Tour of Austria, Tour du Poitou-Charentes and a silver medal at the European Championships. He's on great form to start the year, having already won a stage of the Tour Down Under, and this leaves Quick-Step Floors with a big decision to make. After the Poggio, if there's to be a sprint finish, who leads out and who rides for the win between Gaviria and Viviani. It's a nice decision to make but both men are strong contenders.
Aqua Blue Sport's new bikes
This was the first time this year I've had a good look at Aqua Blue Sport in a race, and I was fascinated to see how their new 3T Strada rode. For those unaware, Aqua Blue are exlusively riding the 3T Strada this year, which is an aero bike, designed for wide 28mm tyres, built only for disc brakes and with nowhere to hang a front derailleur. Wide tyres, disc brakes and aero frames will be pretty common on the World Tour this year, but all those bikes with have a front mech. Second division team Aqua Blue will be running just one one front chainring all year, with a wide range cassette on the back.
Most of the time, getting a wide enough range of gears shouldn't be a problem, they can pretty much replicate the ratio of a 34-30 (front-rear) for the steepest climbs, and still have something close to a 53-11 by running a 44 tooth front ring and a 10-34 cassette. The Issue will be that they will be slightly further apart, a typical 22 speed bike (2 chainrings, 11 speed cassette) has about 14 different gear ratios with some overlap, which means running just one chainring loses you three gear choices.
Why I bring this up, is that Lasse Norman Hansen had a strong race in the breakaway aboard his 3T, winning the king of the mountains classification. Hansen is no stranger to having to ride various cadences, being a former Olympic gold medallist on the track for the omnium, so he's got an advantage there that others wont. What did seem clear to me was he always looked slightly wrong on the bike, certainly spinning a different gear to his breakaway companions most of the time. He made it work though, so it might not be that big an issue racing.