No win but McEwen thrilled to be back in gear
The Sunday Age
Sunday January 3, 2010
ANY other day Robbie McEwen would have been disappointed with a third placing, but that result was as good as a win for the veteran Australian champion and 12-time Tour de France stage winner who yesterday returned to racing after a seven-month absence at the Bay Classic in Geelong.Graeme Brown claimed the opening stage of the four-day criterium series in the men's event and Rochelle Gilmore took the honours among the women, but 37-year-old McEwen had a winner's grin as he put a season ruined by a serious knee injury that required multiple operations behind him."I've been looking forward to getting back into racing since the accident basically, so this is the first little baby step in getting back into it," said the stalwart of the professional circuit, who fractured a shinbone last May and spent the rest of 2009 getting over it. "It was great to be back out there and to be amongst it. I think other years I might have been disappointed to race third, but the result is probably the least of my worries at the moment, it's just getting through it unscathed and feeling like I'm back amongst it, and I'll start building on top of that."My knee's not sore from riding around at the front of the bunch. I've started off with a third and I'll try and build it up as we go through the series. I had a maximum heartrate of 194 [beats per minute] just then, and I didn't get to do a full sprint . . .my heartrate was high throughout, even just sitting at the wheels."Since returning to Australia for the summer, McEwen, a six-time Bay Classic champion, has flagged that he could retire at the end of 2010, but it all depends on the state of his knee."It's on my mind 24-7. Every time I do something with it, whether I'm getting out of bed . . . or out on the road, climbing a hill or doing a sprint, I'm constantly thinking about how my knee's feeling. It was the same today. I was thinking about it, seeing how it feels with the different things I do, big gears, small gears, it's something that's unavoidable," McEwen said after a bunch sprint to the finish line that, had he been in top condition, he might well have claimed at the end of a 40-kilometre criterium."When it came to the [final] sprint I was focused on the sprint but the rest of the race I was trying to gauge myself and think about how it's all feeling. But it felt good. There was no pain, no stiffness, so I think with a few more races it will just get better and better."After completing the four-day series this week, McEwen, who is contracted to Russian outfit Katusha until the end of this year, will ride in the Australian Open road championships in Ballarat and then in the opening ProTour race of this season, Adelaide's Tour Down Under, in around a fortnight. He hopes to be peaking for the Giro d'Italia in May.
© 2010 The Sunday Age
