Ruby Roseman-Gannon claims national road cycling double
Ruby Roseman-Gannon sprinted to victory in the women's national road race. Photo: Con Chronis/AAP
Ruby Roseman-Gannon has made clear her Paris Olympics dream after a landmark win at the Australian road cycling championships.
The Victorian 25-year-old beat four previous winners on Sunday to take out the elite women’s road race at Buninyong, near Ballarat.
It continues a banner nationals for top Australian team Jayco AlUla, which has won two of the three elite events ahead of the the men’s road race being decided later on Sunday afternoon.
Roseman-Gannon also won the criterium championship for the second time on Friday afternoon in Ballarat, dominating the race and finishing by herself.
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Once Sunday’s contest ignited at halfway, Roseman-Gannon was in every key move and scored the biggest win of her emerging career.
The pulsating race came down to a select 11-rider front group featuring all the big names, including defending champion Brodie Chapman, previous winners Amanda Spratt, Nicole Frain and Sarah Gigante, and three-time time-trial champion Grace Brown.
“It’s super special. It means a lot more when everyone is there,” Roseman-Gannon said.
Roseman-Gannon was in shock after winning the bunch sprint as she consigned last year’s run of near-misses – she called it “the curse of fourths” – to history.
She knows it is way too early to think too much about Paris – her mission now is to perform well at the cobbled classics in the European spring.
“I think about Paris a lot, but one step at a time,” she said.
“The course and the way Paris will be ridden is a completely different race (to the nationals), with the narrow streets and cobbles.
“So I’d say putting up my hand in the cobbled classics would probably be the best way to say that.”
An expression from her partner Andrew Christie-Johnson, who was riding in the men’s road race, motivated Roseman-Gannon on Sunday.
“I kept saying ‘diamonds in the legs’ to myself, which is what my partner says a lot, and I felt like I had diamonds in the legs,” she said.
Roseman-Gannon capitalised on superb teamwork by Jayco Alula, as Alex Manly finished third behind Lidl-Trek’s Lauretta Hanson.
“We had a team meeting and everyone was 100 per cent in … we really wanted this. We had tears in the meeting about how much it meant to us,” Roseman-Gannon said.
More broadly, it has also been an emotionally wrenching week for the sport after the death last week of Melissa Hoskins, who once rode for a predecessor of the Jayco Alula team.
A minute’s silence honoured Hoskins before the start of the women’s road race on Sunday morning and riders wore black armbands.
“Of course, the last week as well – I never really knew Mel, but a lot of people are struggling with that,” Roseman-Gannon said.
This is the last time Buninyong and Ballarat will host the nationals after a two-decade run, with the new location yet to be announced.
Unusually for Buninyong, it was a wet race on Sunday, but there were no crashes among the leading riders.
Hanson also had her best result at the nationals by taking second and she, like Roseman-Gannon, was prominent at the front of the race.
Hanson and her Lidl-Trek teammates Spratt and Chapman duelled with the Jayco AlUla riders throughout the closing kilometres.
“Obviously Ruby was just faster and I’m still very proud of second,” Hanson said.
