Baw Baw cyclists success

By Jack Morgan

Exceptional performances from Brenton Jones and Cyrus Monk in the Ballarat National Championships have put Baw Baw on the map.

The renowned competition attracts hundreds of professional riders from across Australia, all vying for the coveted green and gold National Champions jersey.

The first race for the Gippslanders was the criterium on Friday night, a quick 44km race that saw 51 riders compete.

A fifth placing from Jones put him just short of the win, followed by Drouin’s Monk who placed 24th.

“A solid result but obviously disappointing because I could’ve done a little bit better with the expectation I put on myself,” Jones, a rider for Team Inform TMX MAKE, said.

Jones won the event in 2019 and has had a successful start to the year, after winning the Cycle Sunshine Coast and assisting his teammate for the win in the Bay Crits.

Saturday saw competitors return for the 186km road race, with riders facing the tough 160m Mt Buninyong climb on each lap. It’s notorious for its difficulty to finish.

“It’s one of the hardest races in Australia and one of the hardest races going around, just with the course profile and the climb it’s such a demanding course, it definitely only suits a particular kind of rider,” Jones said.

Monk did remarkably, where he secured 12th spot and was one of only 21 competitors to finish, 73 abandoning the race. Monk finished +6:13 behind first place, with winner Lucas Plapp recording a 4h52:04 time.

This year, Monk will be racing under a new banner after returning from Europe last year. Picked up by Meiyo Pro-Cycling, he’ll travel to the United Arab Emirates to race the Sharjah Tour, the first of an exciting calendar across Asia, Europe, and the USA.

And for Jones, there was more than his own race on the line. 

Young DaBinett on the rise

On the final stretch of the U19 Road Race, Warragul’s Edward DaBinett was giving it all he’s got to get across the line. 

He had lost sight of the peloton and had 30km to go until the finish line. 

It’s common for competitors to bow out of the gruelling nine lap, 104km race, but he had come too far to quit.

Two weeks earlier, a pothole risked the end of the 17-year-olds chance at Nationals, after it caused him to crash and rendered his expensive road bike unrepairable.

The carbon frame had cracked and he had lost a bit of skin on the bitumen, but his spirit was still intact.

It took the secondary school student more than two years to save up for the lightweight, aerodynamic race bike, while working after school at McDonalds. 

“When I came down that was my first thought, ‘is the bike ok’ … but it wasn’t.

“It was a lot of effort for me to get the bike so I was pretty disappointed when I lost it,” Edward said.

Only three weeks out from competition and with the replacement scheduled to arrive by February 2023, Edward was out of luck.

“Luckily, Steve at Drouin Cycles lent me a top-of-the-line bike and it was well up to the job, I was pretty lucky that he came up and said you could borrow it because I would’ve been on a bike that was heavier if I didn’t have that option,” Edward said.

The Nationals would be his first ever junior race, and an opportunity to put his hard work to the test. Edward had been training 10 hours a week over the school holidays and was coached by Jones. 

With more than a decade of experience under his belt, Jones had plenty of advice for the rookie.

“It’s really good to be coaching Ed, I think he’s doing a really good job, he’s putting in the hard yards, he’s had those setbacks.

“And to race a bike he hasn’t been training on and still race well in Nationals is very impressive,” Jones said.

“It’s good he had lots of advice, he was also racing Nationals, so he knew what I was coming into and knew what number I had to do to stay in the bunch,” Edward said.

Edward managed to stay with the pack for most of the race, finishing +15.11 behind the leader in 34th position. 

“I was disappointed I didn’t stay with the bunch but I came across the line and finished 10 or 15 minutes down on the leaders but they were in a bunch they could go faster, but I was chuffed that I finished,” he said.

Edward thanked the Warragul Cycling group ‘The Purple Circle’ for doing a great job on the roadside, giving him water bottles and support each lap. He’s confident there will be many more junior races in the future.

“It’s given me a sense of what training I need to do this next year, I’m pretty excited to go back there and not just finish but see what I can do in the race towards the end in the last 30kms,” he said.