Orica-GreenEDGE captain Simon Gerrans will make his long awaited return to Europe, where so much of his horror 2015 season fell apart on the road. He starts GP Industria & Artigianato tomorrow. 

One of the races where he was injured at in 2015 was Strade Bianche. He says his team didn’t even suggest he rode the famous race in 2016. 

“It is a race with a little bit more risk than we normally do. As far as a preparation race goes there’s probably no need to do that,” he told the Herald Sun newspaper. “Obviously [the broken elbow] played in the back of my mind a bit and, to be honest with you, the team didn’t even put it to me. They just said: ‘It’s better off you doing these other couple’.”

Gerrans rode well in the Australian summer, taking top tens in his national road race and the Cadel Evans Great Ocean road race, but his biggest result came with back to back stage wins and a record breaking fourth overall title at the Tour Down Under.

“After going through such a dry spell of results in 2015 due to all the setbacks I had, it just confirmed to me and probably a few guys in the team that I am still capable of winning on the big stage. It hopefully put a line through all that bad luck and allowed me to start 2016 fresh and ready to go.”