Two thousand two hundred and seventeen excited, relieved, exhausted but overall ecstatic cyclists successfully finished a genre of cycling new to Australia – the Gran Fondo. Held on fully closed roads on the picturesque Great Ocean Road and surrounding countryside, the Gran Fondo is a wonderful concept where cyclists of all walks of life are welcome to enter, but where all are timed and the front end of the race is an out-and-out competitive race. Significant prize money and the opportunity to qualify for the UCI Amateur World Championships are up for grabs. The Amy Gillett Foundation organised this event, putting on a show worthy of being one of the absolute best cycling events in Australia.
Starting with 40 kilometres of coastal riding, riders fought for position and battled along the Great Ocean Road between Lorne and Apollo Bay. Riders had started in waves of 200, each separated by two minutes, and it was soon clear that to be competitive you needed to start in one of those first two groups. From my point of view, being in the top section of the first wave, the pace was most definitely ON! We arrived at the base of the first King of the Mountain point a few seconds under an hour riding. This is where the first selection occurred and I found myself sitting in a smaller pack of about 15, the third such pack from the front.
The remaining 80 kilometres were rolling throughout fantastic farming countryside, culminating with a final climb up to Benwerrin. It was this last ten kilometres that saw my legs finally cramp up and crack, but it seemed the same happened for many others. I was super excited to haul the bike over the line in 3:14:57.4. This was good enough for 90th position outright and 9th in the 16-29yo age group! The outright winner – Peter Dennis – was one of three riders to break the three hour barrier, finishing in 2:59:27.8. Joel Pearson finished first in my age group and third outright with a time of 2:59:58.2. As much as 15 minutes seemed a big difference, it was astounding to see guys pushing through their own mental barriers and finishing in four, five and even six hours. Absolute congratulations to all for pushing on and finishing.
A huge thanks must go to Simon Gillett from the Amy Gillett Foundation and Karin Jones from KSJ Events for putting on a truly monumental event. Possibly the only teething issue any competitors saw was the start being delayed due to an injured koala running around the road a couple of kilometres after the start. Almost 2,600 riders were sitting there waiting for this rogue mammal!
While I haven’t spoken with Karin, I did have a chat with Simon after the event and found out the following in terms of community engagement:
- Over 3,000 direct mail-out letters to any residents/businesses who could be affected by the event in someway.
- Of these there were only 18 objections, all of which were successfully rectified.
- 12 Community Forums were held across all towns that would be impacted. The vast majority were hugely supportive after being involved in this level of engagement. Many said that for other similar events (such as the GOR Marathon) there is no engagement and they find out when signs appear on the roads(!)
- 600 residents had their driveways closed for a period of four hours to ensure a completely closed road event.
- At a rough guess from a competitors viewpoint I would have thought spectator numbers were around 3-4000. Perhaps more as it was amazing to see so many people cheering from their front yards, many having invited friends around and set up a bbq to watch the racing. It reminded me of being in a round of the Australian Rally Championship!
And as Diesel found when escorting a photographer on his motorbike, never before has he seen so many riders together in one spot. Yes it’s more expensive than other events at $165 to enter, but to have full road closure, the Great Ocean Road, gorgeous climbs up through Forrest, beautiful farming country and of course the fact that this is a race in the truest sense of the word, well, we definitely have to put together a 6amers team for next year. With the rising strength of us as a group, we have quite a chance at featuring in the team results.
What a day!
See the gallery for some photos or visit Readie’s pillion Rob’s website here.
