By JARROD POTTER
WHILE most riders would not acknowledge a 97th-place-finish in a race, for Drouin cyclist Cyrus Monk, just finishing was victory itself.
Monk, 17, set his gaze on the Tour of Gippsland as his inaugural National Road Series event – making the step up from the Victorian series to his first Australian-level tour.
He earned a ride with the Lakes Oil team, from sport director James Blight, and set himself to finish the race, move up the rankings and away from the tail of the peloton.
While Monk had the home-town advantage – cycling on roads around Warragul and other Gippsland towns he already knew well – the relentless pace of the peloton left him battling to keep in touch, let alone attack for any stage victories or breakaways.
“It was a bit different to what I was expecting,” Monk said.
“I was expecting it to be more similar to the Victorian Road Series but it was a lot faster than that over the whole race.
“The pace was relentless and wasn’t expecting that coming into it – thought there’d be hard patches as there always is at high level racing, but this was non-stop pace-on the whole time.
“For the first three days I found it quite hard as I wasn’t used to that or expecting it and was feeling a bit sick.”
His best result came in the fifth stage – as the tour wound through the hills from Paynesville to Metung – as Monk claimed his peak result of the six-stage tour and finished 11th on the day.
“Saturday I started to feel a fair bit better and was actually competitive on that stage which I was happy with as I hadn’t been really able to influence the race that much,” Monk said.
“On the Saturday I was able to get 11th spot – one of the flatter stages but a lot of the competitors found it pretty tough as they were only small hills but it was still up and down for a lot of it, which made it quite tricky.
“The run-in on that stage to Metung – the final few k’s were quite windy and made it fairly dangerous and there was a big crash inside of a kilometre to go which I managed to just avoid.”
He had a mechanical incident in the final stage criterium and didn’t finish, but there was a time penalty for non-completion instead of a ‘did not finish’ against his name.
It was annoying to not finish the last stage, but Monk was still pleased to complete the tour.
With his first NRS tour completed, the ride has given Monk a taste of bigger things to come with his cycling and he wants to continue pursuing NRS races along with the Victorian series and improve enough to compete against the best Australian riders.
“Mostly experience and seeing the level I have to get towards just to compete against those guys every day of the tour and not just one day,” Monk said.
“It’s a really big wake up call to see what that level is like.”
The six-stage Tour of Gippsland was won by Adelaide’s Tim Roe in 11 hours, 38 minutes and 12 seconds.
Monk wanted to thank the Warragul Cycling Club – for cheering him on at the Warragul leg of the tour.
