On October 6 David McPartland has retired from professional cycling. His last race was the Memorial Cimurri, held in the in Emilia region in Italy. McPartland was previously riding for Tenax and spent this season with Hadimec Cycling Team, which offered him a contract extension. He also had offers from German, Austrian and Italian professional teams. McPartland has had a good season, winning two races, including a stage in the Tour d'Alsace, France. He also cracked the top ten 16 times in 2007.
Nonetheless, the Australian cited that "In a professional field of work like cycling, job security is almost a factor unheard of," and decided instead to retire from racing, as he was offered another job. The new line of work was offered by the Australian Institute of Sport(AIS)/Cycling Australia(CA) High Performance Program and is "longer one in duration terms."
Having been a full time scholarship holder of this program in 2002 before becoming professional, McPartland feels "I have a good understanding of how the program runs." Since he experienced the help first hand, he declared that "I hold the AIS/CA High Performance Program is very high esteem." Because of the quality of the program as well as the adopted "zero tolerance to doping," McPartland feels that the program is well respected in Europe and ProTour teams are well aware of the riders going through it.
McPartland is excited about the new opportunity and even though he leaves professional cycling after only five years, with good success in the end, the Australian stated that "Where one 'nice' door closes another 'nice' door opens for me in this case!"
McPartland's past successes include the win of the Australian Criterium Champion title ahead of none other than Robbie McEwen and David McKenzie, a stage win and the leader's jersey in the Tour down Under and helping Stuart O'Grady and Allan Davis to fourth and fifth place, respectively, in the 2004 Worlds in Verona. He also participated in prestigious races like the Ronde van Vlaanderen and the Giro di Lombardia.
McPartland, who is still in Italy, will return to Australia on November 16.
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