Australian Road Championships: Rohan Dennis blitzes field to take out elite men's time trial

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Rohan Dennis (opens in new tab) won the elite men's time trial at the 2022  Australian national road race championships, debuting in his new Jumbo-Visma (opens in new tab) colours with a dominating ride to secure the elite national title for a fourth time. 

Dennis had a clear upper hand in the battle with Luke Durbridge this time, finishing in 45:33, that was one minute and 13 seconds ahead of the  BikeExchange-Jayco rider. Connor Leahy (InForm TMX MAKE) came third at one minute and nearly 48 seconds back from Dennis.

Dennis and Durbridge have been locked in a long running battle for the Australian time trial national title for a number of years, with the pair having stood side by side on the top two steps of the elite time trial podium at Road Nationals six times. Both now have four elite national time trial titles to their name. 

Durbridge, who is known for his ability to excel in January, had won the previous two times the pair met at the race, 2019 and 2020, but Dennis was determined to take the green and gold striped jersey to his new team, Jumbo-Visma, this time.

“They put a lot of faith in me," said Dennis after the podium presentation. 

"To come in and show respect to that and put all my effort in – not that I haven’t every other year – but to really knuckle down on every little detail to perform for them straight away was really important.” 

The elite men’s time trial was run over 37.5km, with 2 laps of a course that started and finished at the Federation University’s Mount Helen campus. It included some sharp turns and more than 200 metres of elevation on each lap in the testing evening race.

It was clear even before the first lap was over that Dennis, who took bronze in the discipline at the Tokyo Olympic Games and has twice won the world title, was the man to beat. He’d already passed the rider who started a minute ahead before the midpoint and that wasn’t the last rider he overtook either before taking out the national title, which he last did in 2018.

It was the second year in a row Durbridge had stood on the second step of the podium. In 2020 Luke Plapp won the elite title while still an Under 23 rider. 

The 21-year-old was, however, unable to defend the title after being a close contact of a COVID-19 case. The new Ineos Grenadiers rider is however, expected to be able to make it in time for the road race.  

The time trials opened up the competition for the national titles, with the elite road races in Buninyong complete the racing on Sunday.