Jack Bobridge will attack Matthias Brändle's Hour Record in 2015 with his new team Budget Forklifts. The Australian will provide all the details tomorrow at a press conference.
25-year-old Jack Bobridge is a multiple world champion who conquered his first rainbow jersey at just 17 years of age, and is an Olympic silver medallist from 2012. Having been with Garmin and Orica-GreenEDGE in the past, he has raced for Belkin for two years but he has been unable to live up to the lofty expectation, partly because he has suffered from rheumatoid arthritis.
The Australian will try to improve the mark of 51.852 kilometers set by Matthias Brändle and the best Australian mark of 50.052 kilometres set by Bradley McGee. Bradley Wiggins, Thomas Dekker and Alex Rasmussen have also shown their intention to beat the record and on Friday it is expected that Movistar will announce that Alex Dowsett will also make an attempt.
After five years in the WorldTour, Bobridge returns home with the continental Team Budget Forklifts to prepare the track events at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. In 2009, he became U23 world time trial champion ahead of Nelson Oliveira, Patrick Gretsch, Marcel Kittel and Adriano Malori and made the jump to the professional ranks with Garmin in 2010. However, he continued to ride on the track. With Michael Hepburn, Luke Durbridge, Rohan Dennis and Cameron Meyer, he dominated the events on the velodrome, winning the world team pursuit championships in 2010 and 2011. That same year he was also world champion in the individual pursuit and set an outstanding world record along the way. On the road, he was national champion and fifth in the World time trial Championships behind Tony Martin, Bradley Wiggins, Fabian Cancellara and Bert Grabsch at just 22 years of age. In 2012, he won the silver medal at the 2012 Olympics in the team pursuit, having been beaten by Great Britain in the finale. Finally, he had four gold medals from the Commonwealth Games.
In 2012, he left Garmin to join Orica-GreenEDGE but afetr a single year he left the team to join Belkin. In January 2013, he revealed that he had been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis since 2010 but he has since overcome the illness. With a fifth place behind Simon Gerrans, Cadel Evans, Richie Porte and Cameron Meyer at the national championships and a sixth place in the Tour of California time trial, he showed flashes of form in 2014 but the year ended as another disappointment for the talented Australian.
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