Oz's sprinter Damion Drapac had some good legs recently, giving our struggling team some hope in relegation battle: "DamDra" proved that it was a good decision to subscribe him for a couple of C2-races (Southland, Tokyo), even though he missed a win.


Drapac sprinted for three 2nd places and another 3rd in Tour of Maksimov.. ah, Southland! A great achievement, with our team also grabbing the opening TTT for yet another Oz-show against the clock! And he continued to sprint well in his following races: a 7th overall in Eneco Tour (thanks to his breakaway appearances) and a 3rd place in GP Tokyo were quite nice surprises in a month, where Oz Cycling finally realized that it's only about avoiding relegation!


Credit where credit is due: our young guns Tom Scully (12th) and Adam Phelan (13th) did well in Southland, too. And our soon-to-be-sacked (rumor) "sprinter" Alex Rasmussen had his best day in 2013 by finishing 9th in pan-flat Tallinn-Tartu GP.

So here our best results in mid/late May and early/mid June..

Final GC Tour of Southland/

1	Thiago Duarte Nardin	Team Gazelle	21h14'33
2	Sergiu Cioban	Ekspla-Cision Cycling Team	+ 24
3	Federico Rocchetti	Evian-MIAT	+ 38
...
12	Tom Scully	Oz Cycling Project	+ 1'38
13	Adam Phelan	Oz Cycling Project	s.t.

Note #1/ TTT-win in opening stage
Note #2/ Damion Drapac => 2nd in points with 4 stage-podiums


Final Results Tallinn-Tartu GP/

1	Mark Cavendish	airBaltic - Endura	4h32'30
2	Emanuele Rizza	Die Berg Komt Er	s.t.
3	Tomas Vaitkus	airBaltic - Endura	s.t.
...
9	Alex Rasmussen	Oz Cycling Project	s.t.

Final GC Eneco Tour/

1	Ivano Lo Cicero	PFG-Armavia	17h49'45
2	Mark Cavendish	airBaltic - Endura	+ 12
3	Maxime Vantomme	Rothaus - Aegon	+ 16
...
7	Damion Drapac	Oz Cycling Project	+ 26

Final Results GP Tokyo/

1	Jíri Hochmann	Die Berg Komt Er	6h23'40
2	Blaise Sonnery	Evian-MIAT	s.t.
3	Damion Drapac	Oz Cycling Project	s.t.

And now for the rather disappointing races Oz Cycling had recently: starting with the Tour of Japan, where - to be honest - we couldn't expect anything special to happen, except of Michael Rogers taking out the short TT (which he did) and surviving the Mt Fuji.


"We might have underestimated Michael's disadvantage in the mountains, so all we have to hope for is less selective climbs", said manager TS Moha a few days ago. At least the team could avoid a disaster in Japan: Matthew Lloyd finished 8th in GC and Rogers 12th. It could have been worse.


Timetrials continued to be the one thing Oz can rely on this year: even though the team missed the stage-win in Tour de l'Ain's TTT as 2nd, the result kept Jean-Christophe Peraud in good position.. but our frenchman once again failed to hang on with the best and sub-best, losing minutes in his home countries mountains.. eventually finishing 19th in GC.

Worst of the bad: Michael Rogers' performance in the Tour of Czech Republic! Not even managing to take out the ITT, our veteran totally failed to position himself safely in the bunch. After almost losing minutes in the flat opening stage, it was no surprise to see Rogers being dropped in the crucial hilly stage.. + 25 minutes.. well... at least Giovanni Visconti proved to be reliable, finishing 11th in GC for some points.

Final GC Tour of Japan/

1	Florentino Marquez	HTC Nieuwsblad	16h41'27
2	Jianhua Ji	Meiji - Cannondale	+ 20
3	Ian Bibby	Jaguar - Eritel	+ 30
...
8	Matthew Lloyd	Oz Cycling Project	+ 2'06
...
12	Michael Rogers	Oz Cycling Project	+ 2'52

Note #1/ TT-win by Rogers

Final GC Tour de l'Ain/

1	Thomas Dekker	Team Vueling Airlines	16h21'08
2	Ian Bibby	Jaguar - Eritel	+ 57
3	David Abal	Team CSC-Orbea	+ 59
...
19	Jean-Christophe Peraud	Oz Cycling Project	+ 5'50

Final GC Tour of the Czech Republic/

1	David Zabriskie	ING Cycling - Project	17h25'12
2	Lars Boom	Rothaus - Aegon	+ 9
3	Vladimir Karpets	LukOil-Rostelekom	+ 37
...
11	Giovanni Visconti	Oz Cycling Project	+ 1'51

There have been a couple of races, where Alex Rasmussen proved he ain't worth a penny and unfortunately, he did not prove this wrong in GP Moscow.. we couldn't expect him to score high points, but his 48th place in a totally flat classic was underwhelming..


The Clasica a Quetzaltenango saw a somehow expected low-key performance by Oz Cycling.. while Matthew Lloyd (picture) surprisingly climbed to a 5th place in the race opener, our best climber Shaun Lewis couldn't deliver at all.. with the three mountain stages simply being too hard for all of Oz's starters, Lewis eventually finished 41st as the team's best..

And to conclude this disastrous results' review: while Rasmussen did rather well in Tallinn-Tartu GP, Damion Drapac couldn't prove his good shape in Berlin ProRace, finishing 29th. In a high-quality field we would never had asked for a Top-10, but at least some minor points would have been nice. Anyway, at least Drapac scored some points in other races recently!

Final Results GP Moscow/

1	Danilo Napolitano	Evian-MIAT	4h50'12
2	Jurgen Roelandts	Bouygues Telecom	s.t.
3	Maxime Vantomme	Rothaus - Aegon	s.t.
...
48	Alex Rasmussen	Oz Cycling Project	s.t.

Final Results Berlin ProRace/

1	Allan Davis	Hollister Pro Cycling	4h25'23
2	Peter Kennaugh	Team Vueling Airlines	s.t.
3	Óscar Avelino	Prio - Porto	s.t.
...
29	Damion Drapac	Oz Cycling Project	s.t.

Final GC Clasica a Quetzaltenango/

1	Thomas Dekker	Team Vueling Airlines	59'14
2	Jose Alarcon	Team Bintang	+ 34
3	Martijn Keizer	VolksWagen-Mapei	+ 1'17
...
41	Shaun Lewis	Oz Cycling Project	+ 4'31

Jean-Christophe Peraud brought in his best result for Oz Cycling so far by finishing 5th overall in Tour de Slovenie! The french veteran was almost dropped in the opening flat stage, but eventually was given the same time as the stage-winner.

The decisive hilly stage on third day was the most important, obviously: while Matthew Lloyd once again proved to be a strong finisher as 4th on that day, also Peraud kept contact to the group of favorites.



So once again an ITT eventually led to a decent Oz-result: thanks to Peraud finishing 7th against the clock on final day, our veteran managed to jump onto GC's 5th! "Tres bien!", he said. Unfortunatelly, Visconti crashed early in the race, otherwise our team maybe would have done better than finishing 2nd in team's classification.

Final GC Tour de Slovenie/

1	Martijn Keizer	VolksWagen-Mapei	15h09'45
2	Ian Bibby	Jaguar - Eritel	+ 40
3	Lars Boom	Rothaus - Aegon	+ 42
4	Tony Martin	Bouygues Telecom	s.t.
5	Jean-Christophe Peraud	Oz Cycling Project	+ 46

The Monterrey TTT saw 10 teams challenging for victory and Oz Cycling Project was the clear favorite with our best timetrialers Rogers, Michael Ford and Olman at the start.

After trailing by 9" on Metinvest at the first checkpoint, our team took control of the 55km course and managed to stand the pressure as top-seeded squad. In the end, Oz took out the race.. Race-reporter CountArach: "But of course the result was pretty much known before the day started and Oz Cycling can enjoy their win, even if it perhaps wasn’t quite as dominant as expected by many." A satisfying trip to Mexico for the team, which could finally bring in some better results most recently.

Final Result Monterrey TTT/

1	Oz Cycling Project	1h21'32
2	Metinvest-Emirates	+ 20
3	Alstom-RBC	+ 26
4	Jaguar - Eritel	+ 28
5	Tinkoff Bank - Rosneft OJSC	+ 37

A timetrial, where both Michael Rogers and David "Big Z" Zabriskie line up.. what else can a timetrial-nerd hope for? And here we are, on the Isle of Man, where one of the most prestigious TT-classics of the PCT 2013 was held.

Like for every TT this year, Oz Cycling could hope for at least a nice amounts of points, but of course we also hoped for Rogers to beat his biggest opponent Zabriskie.. a tough challenge, as the profile was likely to suit "Big Z" better than MR.

And so we had to be satisfied with Rogers finishing 2nd, as he got crushed by Zabriskie, losing 1'40" on the tough course.. but our team did well though: Peraud (10th) and Ford (11th) completed a decent overall result. But of course it's a shame to not see the rainbow-shirt on the top of the podium here.

Results Isle of Man ITT/

1	David Zabriskie	ING Cycling - Project	1h29'29
2	Michael Rogers	Oz Cycling Project	+ 1'40
3	Ian Stannard	Jaguar - Eritel	+ 2'15
...
10	Jean-Chris Peraud	Oz Cycling Project	+ 3'31
11	Michael Ford	Oz Cycling Project	+ 3'35

O(z)kay in the USAPCC - but bottom teams score high!

The USA Pro Cycling Challenge, formerly known as the Tour of Colorado, was a quite important trip for Oz Cycling: being a HC-race and featuring a concluding ITT, the team was hoping for Michael Rogers to grab a decent result here.

Things went well on first days: an uneventful mountain-stage did not create crucial gaps and also Matthew Lloyd finished 3rd with a mid-stage escape. The first of two hilly stages went worse for Oz, but still no bigger gaps - so Rogers, as well as Lloyd and Visconti - could aim for a good GC-finish.



But things went bad in the penultimate - though hilly - stage: Rogers once again lost valuable minutes. No chance for a Top-10 result anymore.. even though Lloyd still was high in the provisional GC, he was expected to lose time in the final stage..

..and yes, he did. Anyway, Lloyd as 13th brought in a rather unexpected decent result here. Quite important, as several other teams from the bottom of the PCT-rankings (Amex, Repsol, LukOil) scored big time! Rogers at least managed to win the ITT, but his 23rd in final GC won't give Oz too many points.

Results USA PCC/

1	Andrei Kashechkin	Repsol-Cativen	26h44'51
2	Martijn Keizer	VolksWagen-Mapei	+ 10
3	Sylvain Chavanel	AMEX Pro Cycling	+ 39
...
13	Matthew Lloyd	Oz Cycling Project	+ 1'52

Note/ TT-win by Rogers

Should we stay or should we go? Some Oz-fans may ask themselves, if this team really deserves to stay in the PCT for another year.. of course we do! But there's more than one question mark behind Oz Cycling's future in the PCT, unfortunately.

So the team faces a huge wall of pressure for the few last races.. let's have a look at the rankings first. For now, Oz would stay in the division, but it's too close.. too close!

"The wall" consists of five races only! The pressure is on the likes of Peraud, Rogers and our several puncheurs to score enough points in this few events.. to be honest, it really shouldn't be like that. Some bad luck with splits, but also unlucky race planning (cough.. Rogers...) might be the main reasons for Oz findinig itself in the relegation battle that deep..

It's hard to say, if those "hopes" will avoid the relegation in the end.. of course there's still those other teams down there, that could "easily" score a few points more.

So if there's anybody cheering for the Oz Cycling Project to continue it's way in the PCT instead of CT next year, keep your fingers crossed for Peraud to hold on to his Top-10 in America and for Rogers to finally survive a rather easy hilly stage in the leading group! Let's keep the Oz alive!