{"id":51785,"date":"2026-01-30T23:11:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T23:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2024\/?p=51785"},"modified":"2026-02-03T11:55:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T11:55:17","slug":"defending-champion-schmid-leads-team-jayco-alula-into-cadels-evans-great-ocean-road-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/defending-champion-schmid-leads-team-jayco-alula-into-cadels-evans-great-ocean-road-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Defending champion Schmid leads Team Jayco AlUla into Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Defending champion <strong>Mauro Schmid<\/strong> will lead <strong>Team Jayco AlUla<\/strong> into the <strong>Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race <\/strong>on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Swiss champion heads into the one-day race in strong form after an impressive and consistent Tour Down Under where he finishes second overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Schmid will be backed by a strong Australian support squad with new signings <strong>Hamish McKenzie<\/strong> and <strong>Rudy Porter<\/strong>, plus the experienced and powerful duo of <strong>Luke Durbridge<\/strong> and <strong>Kell O\u2019Brien<\/strong> all back in action in Geelong this weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Grand Tour stage winners <strong>Ben O\u2019Connor<\/strong> and <strong>Luke Plapp<\/strong> complete the line up, giving the team further options for the demanding one-day WorldTour race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Team Jayco AlUla:<br><\/span>Luke Durbridge (AUS)<br>Hamish McKenzie (AUS)<br>Kell O\u2019Brien (AUS)<br>Ben O\u2019Connor (AUS)<br>Luke Plapp (AUS)<br>Rudy Porter (AUS)<br>Mauro Schmid (SUI)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Mauro Schmid:<br><\/span><em>\u201cI think it\u2019s not an easy race to defend, but I feel really good after Tour Down Under and I\u2019ve started a bit better this year, so I\u2019m hoping I can continue the good form and race an aggressive race on Sunday.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>For us, we have a good team for the climb with Ben and Plappy, plus Kell is also going super well, so I think the pacing on the climb should be high because we need to reduce the group as much as possible and then we have a good shot if we\u2019ve got numbers in the final and that can be crucial.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>It\u2019s definitely possible to defend my title, but you need everything to go right, but that\u2019s what we\u2019ll try to do.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">2026 Cadel Evan Great Ocean Road Race \u2013 Race Details:<br><\/span>Sun, 1 Feb \u2013 Geelong-Geelong, 182.3km<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Photo: Sprint Cycling<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Defending champion Mauro Schmid will lead Team Jayco AlUla into the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race on Sunday. The Swiss champion heads into the one-day race in strong&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51786,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[296,386],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51795,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51785\/revisions\/51795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}