All eyes were on Froome at the start, with the four-time Tour de France champion hopping on a plane with a late entry to the race. Bad weather delayed the single propeller plane that brought Froome in and he emerged fully kitted up from the aircraft to get to the startline quickly, as the race was delayed for 10 minutes to allow the star rider to start with the rest of the field.
The most decorated participant ever in the long history of the Melbourne to Warrnambool, Froome was to form an unlikely partnership with one of the most experienced competitors in the race, Ben Hill (Blackshaw Racing).
Hill has been trying to win the race for a decade now, in and around the podium without climbing on top of it despite some stellar rides. A new father, Hill is best known in his road career for winning top races in Asia, leading races like the Tour of Slovenia, taking jersey victories at the Herald Sun Tour and being one of the big hitters on the domestic scene.
Both missed the early series of moves that eventually formed into the 29-strong group at the head of affairs.
“I don’t know what I did wrong at the start of the race,” said Hill to SBS Sport post-race. “I knew my team had three in there but I didn’t realise that it was so big. Riders just kept going across and I just missed it, I didn’t really have an excuse, I wasn’t paying enough attention. 29 riders, ideally, I would have been in there, but we we’re happy to run it with three guys.”
Froome was similarly caught behind, but was the victim of advice that was more tuned to the normal flow of the race.
“I didn’t really expect such a big group to go earlier on, everyone told me to be conservative in the first 100, 150k’s but it seems as if that was race over in the first 20,” said Froome. “A group of 20 guys went up the road with all the teams represented so behind there wasn’t really much of a chase going on.”
The time checks were a bit inconsistent, with the times at stages suggesting a massive gap to the leaders, and at others a narrow advantage. In hindsight, the timing was far too much to bridge at over 10 minutes, but out on the road, things were less certain and attacks started flowing as the peloton hit the Great Ocean Road.
“When we got to the coast, ARA went really hard up the hills and started attacking,” said Hill. “I was chatting with Matt Rice just before the feed and an attack went with ARA, Bridgelane and Froomey, and I was like ‘we’ve got to be in that’, so I jumped across and it looked like the bunch sat up.
“I had no idea what we were racing for at that stage, but I just wanted to start racing. We weren’t really working together and Chris Froome was riding hard in the gutter, second wheel dropped and everyone was looking at each other, so I jumped across to Froomey and that was it, with 60 kilometres to go it was just two of us.”
Hill isn’t a stranger to optimistic moves at the ‘Warrny’, a two-man effort in no-mans land with Ayden Toovey in 2020 preparing him for the effort with Froome.
“We went about a similar time and we were stuck in a two-man move for ages,” said Hill of that race. “I think we got a bit closer that time, to within a minute. I was thinking about that a lot today, ‘Ben, why are you in this situation again, you need to go earlier’, it felt like I’d been there before.”
“We got told the race was a long way in front and Froome was like ‘what do you want to do?’. I said ‘I’m just happy to be in a two-man breakaway with Chris Froome, so let’s just swap off to the finish’. He said ‘sounds good’.”
Froome has been in Bright recently, completing a training block to set him up for the rest of the 2023 season along with Luke Plapp (INEOS Grenadiers). The bulk training saw him run out of legs by the end of the race.
“At 30 kilometres to go, Froomey started to fade and was talking to me saying ‘sorry, I’ve done 350 kilometres in the last two days, sorry I can’t do more,” said Hill. “I was like, ‘no worries, just do what you can’.
“By ten kilometres to go, he kept on apologising for not being able to do more, and I said ‘it really doesn’t matter, we’re not getting to the front of the race’. We caught a little group with five kilometres to go, I rode hard around them and Froomey sat on to stay with them while I kept going on without him.”
Hill went on to chase down enough riders to finish eighth, almost five minutes down on winner Tristan Saunders (Team Bridgelane), but making up an impressive eight minutes from the peloton, who mostly finished well over 13 minutes behind. Froome was 12th on the day.
“I was pretty disappointed that I didn’t get myself into the race, but at the same time I swapped off with Chris Froome for one and a half hours,” said Hill. “I was saying that to Beck (Ben’s wife), this is a memory that will stay with me for life.”
For Froome it was a big hit-out ahead to round off his training block ahead of bigger goals later in the year.
“Yeah, I came here looking for a hard training ride and that’s exactly what I got,” said Froome. “Finished completely cross-eyed over the finish line there... what a day that was an amazing race, an amazing event, very well organised, great racing.
“Congrats to whoever came over the line first, I didn’t actually get to see that far ahead but yeah that was a brutal but great event.”
Froome refused startline money for appearing at the event, but a donation was made to his charity by the Melbourne to Warrnambool organising committee.
“The race organisation has very generously supported the Safari Simbaz cycling project out in Kenya, which is where I grew up,” said Froome. “It’s a project helping kids from difficult backgrounds get into cycling and basically have a second chance at life through the bike and the opportunities that the bike will allow them.
“The project is in its very early stages and we are hoping to be able to build great things for them. Amazing for the support and hopefully we are going to make something special out of it.”
Hill, meanwhile, will be competing in the Zwift e-Worlds Championships in a few weeks time, before extending his budding triathlon career into Ironman events, with a half-Ironman and a full Ironman on the agenda.
