{"id":55717,"date":"2014-01-17T21:08:22","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T02:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/?p=55717"},"modified":"2014-01-17T21:08:22","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T02:08:22","slug":"multi-pronged-attack-drapac-zealand-cycle-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/2014\/01\/17\/multi-pronged-attack-drapac-zealand-cycle-classic\/","title":{"rendered":"Multi-pronged attack for Drapac at New Zealand Cycle Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Drapac Professional Cycling heads across the ditch for the New Zealand Cycle Classic with a versatile team ready for the notoriously tough conditions. Raced over five stages, the UCI 2.2 event gets underway on\u00a0January 29\u00a0in Palmerston North.<\/p>\n<p>Two riders spearhead General Classification hopes \u2013 Jai Crawford and Adam Phelan with Directeur Sportif Henk Vogels suggesting that fast man Mal Rudolph could also spring a surprise.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMal Rudolph is someone we believe is coming back into career-best form, he was there until the death at nationals and he\u2019s been doing a hell of a lot of work with his coach Gordon McCauley on his explosiveness so with those three guys we\u2019ve got all the stages covered,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<p>While Phelan will be eager to get his race started with a strong showing in the opening stage 6.1km time trial, Crawford has to wait a little longer with a final stage hilltop finish set to close out the event on\u00a0February 2.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s better to have two different GC-type of riders than to have them both the same,\u201d Crawford explained. \u201cIt gives us options for the breakaways. You don\u2019t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that I\u2019ll probably wait for the hilltop finish so it\u2019s going to give us options and that\u2019s always an advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The New Zealand Cycle Classic marks Phelan\u2019s second event at the Elite level having stepped up from Under-23\u2019s and the WorldTour Academy squad based in Europe. The Canberra rider admitted that there was some pressure attached to his ambitious start to the season but it\u2019s a challenge he is excited by.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA 6.1km prologue which means I get to test myself in a TT which will be the first time this year so it\u2019s good to see where I\u2019m at with that and try and set up a good position for GC as well,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt could also mean that you become a target early on if you do well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Also part of the five-man line up will be Floris Goesinnen in his first race of the season for Drapac along with Ben Johnson who impressed in his first nationals since 2008 last week in Ballarat having come out of retirement.<\/p>\n<p>Vogels suggested that Goesinnen and Johnson could also be dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJohnson is going to get better and better after a few years out of the sport and I won\u2019t be too surprised to see him go really well on the climb. He\u2019s also very good in cross-winds and he\u2019s got a lot of experience,\u201d he said<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Floris Goesinnen we\u2019ve got the cross-wind king so it\u2019s a pretty well rounded out squad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Full interviews with Jai Crawford and Adam Phelan can be found on the Drapac Soundcloud account.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Drapac Professional Cycling Team for the New Zealand Cycle Classic: Jai Crawford, Floris Goesinnen, Ben Johnson, Adam Phelan and Mal Rudolph.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Drapac Professional Cycling heads across the ditch for the New Zealand Cycle Classic with a versatile team ready for the notoriously tough conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[81],"tags":[21111,25236,13945,23655,21109,1562,7673,6645,12859,168],"class_list":["post-55717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-road","tag-american-films","tag-drapac-cannondale-holistic-development-team","tag-drapac-professional-cycling","tag-ef-education-first-pro-cycling","tag-films","tag-new-zealand","tag-professional-cycling","tag-prologue","tag-target","tag-uci"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}