Simon Gerrans is no stranger to Buninyong in early-January having claimed two Australian national road race titles on the hilly 10km circuit just outside of Ballarat. While his Orica-Scott team will field its smallest squad yet for Sunday's race, the 36-year-old is confident a tactically flexible approach that includes options for all six riders to win will assist in the ambition of regaining the green and gold jersey.
"Tactically obviously there a few different way to go about it it, but I think as much as we have got our smallest line-up ever with Orica-Scott this year, we have got cards to play in every scenario," Gerrans told assembled media a day out from the race. "And I think that's going to be our big advantage. For myself I will be given a sort of specific role on the day that I will have to follow, and if the race unfolds in that way then I will be there, and hopefully there going for a win. If that's not the case hopefully I've got one of my teammates that have already wrapped the race up."
Caleb Ewan is one of the cards that Orica-Scott can play and his priors on the Buninyong circuit with victory in the U23 race and silver in 2015 when IAM Cycling's Heinrich Haussler took out the victory. In 2016, a super human effort from Jack Bobridge (Trek-Segafredo) 90km out from the finish line caught everyone napping. In 2017, the peloton will be out to stop Orica-Scott from claiming the victory but for Gerrans the race will be a more open affair than previous years as he explained.
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“I'm not sure if everyone out there is out there just to stop Orica-Scott winning. There might have been a few situations a little bit negative in the last couple of years. But looking at the field this year, everyone is lining up is hoping to win for themselves or their team," he said. "It's not so much everyone against us. But you can never predict every single scenario that is going to unfold in the race. Like, how Jack won last year … I don't think anybody saw that coming. That would have been really hard to pre-empt a move like that. You can never predict every scenario, but if we race well as a collective in the team we should have most situations covered."
Wanting to avoid a repeat of last year's result when Orica-Scott missed the podium for the first time in history, Gerrans explained what lessons the team had learned from 2016.
"It was a phenomenal ride by Jack last year. When he went out there kind of mid-race and started chugging away mostly on his own we thought, 'he is going to come back any stage now.' And he just kept out there and stayed out there all day. No one could go near him. Learning from that situation probably wouldn't give any group with a major threat like a guy Jack as much of an advantage as they gave last year. Saying that, we didn't see Jack Bobridge as a huge threat."
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