Were it not for the snap of a handlebar in Rio de Janeiro, Rohan Dennis would likely have brought the curtain down on his season well before these UCI Road World Championships in Doha. The Australian was on course for a silver medal – or more – in the time trial at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games only for a most untimely equipment malfunction that ultimately saw him slip to fifth place and redraw his late-season plans.
"To be honest, if I'd won in Rio, I probably would have been more than happy to call it a season. It was a little bit rough the first half, with sickness and just fighting to get on top of things. So if I did pull it off then, I might have thought: 'Ok, end it on a high,'" Dennis told Cyclingnews in Doha. "I would probably have continued to race, I'm paid to race, but just not with any pressure and end my season as I normally would do, in September."
Dennis was remarkably sanguine when discussing his ill fortune in the minutes immediately after finishing his effort in Rio – "Shit happens," he said wistfully – but some wounds take time to make themselves felt in earnest. The consolation of defeat is that it offers the chance to dream it up all over again, but the cruelty of an Olympic defeat is that the chance takes so long to come around again.
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"It makes it harder because it was something that shouldn't have happened, but it did and it's always going to be in the back of my mind: 'What if it didn't break?' I know in my own mind that silver would have been a guarantee, but obviously you never know what extra pressure that would have put on Fabian [Cancellara] too. I think that's the hardest: the unknowns of what might have been and the fact that it's four years until another chance," Dennis said.
"A lot of people have said 'You're only young, so you've still got two more Olympics in you.' But I still have to make it to those Olympics. It's not a year by year thing, where you've got another chance regularly."
The World Championships, on the other hand, are a yearly occurrence, and while victory would not quite provide full consolation for Rio, a rainbow jersey would put a rather different sheen on Dennis' season. Others who came away from Brazil disappointed, notably silver medallist Tom Dumoulin (Netherlands) and Tony Martin (Germany), are also among the favourites for Wednesday's race, though holding form to this point in the year is a hazardous business.
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