No Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race for 2022 as organiser rules out September date
Finding a new spot in the calendar has proven too difficult for the one day race - so it won't take place at all
The Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race has confirmed that it will not be taking place in September of 2022, as a build-up race for the Wollongong UCI Road World Championships.
Race director of the Eurométropole Tour Louis Cousaert recently said he heard "noises" about the postponed Tour Down Under and Great Ocean taking place before the Worlds, but the latter has denied any such race.
Both Great Ocean and Tour Down Under decided to postpone the 2022 events that were due to take place at the start of the year. Now, they won't take place at all.
"It’s not going to happen," said Scott Sunderland, who has been announced as the race director for the events at Wollongong and is also race director of the Ocean Race.
"We talked about it and looked at the details because when you have to cancel or postpone an event, you look at the alternatives. We looked at the calendar for opportunities but it was just too difficult.”
This year due to international lockdowns the Tour Down Under organisers held a Festival of Cycling which covered much of the same roads as the WorldTour stage race but only had riders who live in Australia taking part.
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This was both for elite men and women with only a handful of European-based riders making it back to spend the Australian summer with their families.
The Tour Down Under recently said that they will not be holding an event this year either and are looking forward to welcoming everyone back in January of 2023.
Both of these races took place at the start of 2020 before the pandemic took place with Richie Porte and Ruth Winder winning the Tour Down Under as well as Dries Devenyns and Liane Lippert winning the Ocean Race.
This news comes at the same time as the announcement of the routes for the 2022 Worlds road races and time trials in Wollongong with a very punchy race looking to be set up for the road races.
Tim Bonville-Ginn is a freelance writer who has worked with Cycling Weekly since 2020 and has also written for many of the biggest publications in cycling media including Cyclingnews, Rouleur, Cyclist and Velo.