Bennelong SwissWellness team manager Andrew Christie-Johnston is accustomed to spending January at the Santos Tour Down Under watching his riders take wins and animate the race. In 2018, Christie-Johnson takes on an official role in the race as the sports director for the UniSA-Australia wild card team.
As the top National Road Series (NRS) team for 2017, Bennelong SwissWellness qualified its top five riders for the UniSA-Australia team in a change from previous years regarding team selection. While four of Christie-Johnston's trade team riders will line out at the Tour Down Under this coming week with UniSA-Australia, a miscommunication regarding a change in the UCI anti-doping testing and whereabouts pool regulations resulted in the ineligibility of several of his riders in a pre-race blow.
"It was a surprise when I arrived at nationals to hear that we had a bit of an issue with the selection," Christie-Johnston told Cyclingnews at the Tour Down Under team presentation. "Something I didn't really want to hear. We had to accept it and I know Cycling Australia over those next few days at the nationals did a lot of work to try and get dispensation from the UCI to allow the minimal time that we had but that it was probably never likely.
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"For me, it is all about the development of our riders. Some of our riders have known that they were likely to get a start probably three months before nationals and they had done a lot of work. That was the biggest disappointment. To be able to tell those guys that unfortunately we don't have six weeks notice for CA to put you on a doping pool list."
Local Adelaide rider and bronze medallist at the nationals, Chris Harper, one such rider to miss the race as a result.
While there is no hiding the disappointment of Christie-Johnston and his riders regarding the issue, he has moved on with the focus now squarely on enjoying the race and taking the opportunity with both hands.
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