Queensland Road Team Series Round 3 Kingaroy - Retrospect With CAllum O'Sullivan

photo credit to the owner

With the dust well and truly settled from round three of the Queensland Road Team Series in Kingaroy, QLD. We thought we’d take a retrospective look at the event and the team’s performance through one of our riders, Callum O’Sullivan. 

Round three of the Queensland Road Teams Series saw five fit young men; Adam Allen, Correy Edmed, Elliot Kippen, David Melville, John Rambo (myself, Callum O’Sullivan) and the borderline morbidly obese Grunkopotamus (Alex Grunke) head off to peanut country – Kingaroy, for two challenging road races.  After a very successful round two, all the boys (and animals) were ready to strap their climbing legs on and search for more podiums and consolidate our team's classification position.  

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While day two has historically been a very challenging course, the day one road race has usually been an easier affair. This year, however, the powers that be in the CQ office decided that they didn’t want to see a sprinter win either of the weekend’s races and added a solid climb at the eighteen-kilometre mark of stage one.  It was on this climb in the first lap that the race really kicked into action, when a break of four men slipped away that included the super-aggressive David Melville. With Melville up the road, the focus for the rest of us shifted from being super aggressive to following any dangerous moves that may have been able to reach the breakaway at the later stages of the race.  With the pace easing up a bit roughly thirty-five km’s into the race I realised that there hadn’t been any crashes, which is a very welcome surprise for a QRTS race.  So, of course, five seconds after I had that thought, I felt what I thought was the asteroid from the 1998 film Armageddon smashing into the earth behind me…luckily (for mankind) and unluckily (for the team), it was just the Grunkopotamus hitting the deck after being unable to avoid a crash in front of him. 

By the time the second climb had come around, two more men including Kristian Juel had joined the initial four-man break, and with all the big teams being represented in the move, it was almost assured that the winner would come from those six men.  I, however, was pretty keen to get a nice steak at the RSL club as early as possible, so after the second ascent of the KOM, myself and three other riders decided to grit our teeth and ride across to the break.  On the final KOM ascent I had to try and split the breakaway as much as possible if either Melville or I were going to take the win, as my max sprint wattage is less than that of Charlotte Bonner, the four-year-old daughter of our Team Director; and while we did drop a few riders, many of them would regain contact with us a few k’s before the finish.  In the end, I finished tenth in the sprint (also known as dead last), while Melville finished a very respectable sixth. Correy finished up in eleventh, just over a minute behind us, while Adam Allen won the sprint in the main peloton for thirteenth place. Congratulations Adam. 

DAY TWO

After a great feed at the always-pumping Kingaroy RSL Club the night before, we were ready to attack in Sunday’s 114 km road race.  Apparently, our team plan got sent out as a memo to the other strong riders, as there was no chance to ease into the second stage!  A split of roughly twenty riders, including the entire team (minus Kippen) got away on the first climb of the day, a mere three km’s into the stage.  Unfortunately for us, the break contained a fair few passengers, whereas the bunch contained a lot of motivated riders, and we were brought back just after the start of the second lap.  Almost as soon as we were brought back, Melville decided that he needed to get in some chop-off practice for this week’s Lifecycle Classic, and attacked the bunch in order to form another breakaway.  Similar to the day before, we had two men in a break often, as Melville was quickly joined by the man who is single-handedly paying for one sultana grower’s brand new Ferrari, Correy Edmed.  Once again having riders up the road made the job for the rest of us a little easier, although we were all very attentive in following any dangerous moves from the still aggressive bunch.  With just over one lap to go, Elliott joined a move with two other riders that made contact with the leading break just before the final KOM.  Sadly the long day out had taken its toll on our three men up the road, and they were unable to follow the decisive three-man-move that went on the final KOM.  Correy, Melville, and Kippen all finished just slightly behind the winning move, meaning that once again although we were unable to find the podium, the team made up some vital points on Teams Classification. 

On a final note, the team and I can’t thank Stuart Cowin and David Betts enough for their hard work during the QRTS; having a dedicated staff/DS makes racing a bike a walk in the park. Also to Cycling Queensland and all the volunteers who help us get through these weekends year-round.