Bronze medalist Allan Davis (Australia)(Image credit: Sirotti)
Allan Davis celebrates winning the Noosa Grand Prix(Image credit: Eyes Wide Open Images)
Brothers Scott and Allan Davis showed off their new team kit for the first time since announcing their move to Astana last week.(Image credit: Shane Goss)
Australian and Astana sprinter Allan Davis is happy with the way his roller coaster year has ended, with gold at the Commonwealth Games and bronze in the world championships. But he is determined to do even better in 2011 and 2012 after a difficult start to the season.
“WorldS gold would obviously have been nice too but after my start of the year, no-one could have expected more,” Davis told the Australian daily News-Mail.
“To be honest, my first half of the year was not up to what I normally do and I needed a good look at the mirror and to get into it. I wasn’t worth a cracker – I normally do well in the Tour Down Under and go straight over to Europe and hit the Classics, but the last half pulled the season off for me.”
Davis' main goals for the year were those two end of season races representing Australia. He admitted he started the season in January in less-than-perfect condition and said he deserved the criticism he got for doing poorly at the Tour Down Under. He was defending champion but failed to win a single stage and finished 87th overall.
"I think a lot of that was right - I was a little bit overweight, I did take it a bit too easy," he told the Sydney Morning Herald. "When you do have a good break those things do creep up on you."
"Physically I do have to keep an eye on that. This year I'm looking to start my season better."
He will look to do better in the Tour Down Under in January, even though he admits that defending champion Andre Greipel is “pretty hard to beat.”
Get The Leadout Newsletter
The latest race content, interviews, features, reviews and expert buying guides, direct to your inbox!
His other two season highlights will be the Tour de France and the Worlds in Copenhagen. But the Australian is looking to 2012 as well.
“The London Olympics is on top of the table – I’ve always been a reserve for the last two Olympics and it’s grating at me to do well there, and the talk is that the road race circuit that they’re going to use is right up my alley.” he told the News-Mail.
“I’m 30 now and I’ll be 32 by then and it might be my last crack at the Olympics – hopefully I’ll be still around in 2016 but there are a lot of good young riders coming through and it’s pretty cut-throat in the road race team with only five spots available.”
Thank you for reading 5 articles in the past 30 days*
