After going 1-2 in the Australian time trial with Rohan Dennis and Richie Porte, BMC Racing are looking to repeat the trick for the Road Race.
"They have more cards to play with breakaways but we just have to be smarter with the numbers," said Dennis of teams like Orica-Greenedge and Avanti, who have multiple riders lining up. "We have quality riders with Richie and I but they have quantity to fire more bullets a little more freely and go with a few dark horses before letting off their main guys with Caleb Ewan and Simon Gerrans."
"That is an option," said Dennis of attacking early as another tactical option for BMC, "but it also depends on what’s happening out in front and like what happened with [Will] Clarke out front and they put all their guys on the front and pulled that break back and Gerro won obviously," he said of the 2014 race. "He produced on the day, we have to look at what guys are in the breakaway and decide what is a good idea like what Jack [Bobridge] did in 2011 and attacked to go across and went early.”
Porte says that there is no team that can really put all of their riders on the front to pull it back for a leader, as the race will be so unpredictable. While Porte has two bronze medals on this course, he doesn’t expect Dennis to work for him.
"I don’t really see any team that can do that and I certainly don’t expect Rohan to come and do that. I don’t think it’s a hard enough climb and there is so much recovery in that course. Yeah, you could hit it from the bottom but you’d have to be absolutely flying to hold on to the top before they accidentally let you go which is not impossible either is it?"
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