Cycling: McCauley back on bike and ready for hard work

Gordon McCauley and his new bikes worth $30,000. Picture / Brett Phibbs

Gordon McCauley is resigned to doing the donkey work for team-mate Greg Henderson in the Commonwealth Games road race in March but that will come after he has had his hoped-for time in the sun.

McCauley is back on his bike and upping his training after a potentially Games-ending accident in South Auckland a couple of weeks ago. He was hit by a car that did not stop and suffered a broken wrist and facial abrasions. But he has his sights set on the 40km time trial in Melbourne.

Between now and his chance to improve on his ninth-place finish at the Manchester Games four years ago, McCauley, 33, will return to competitive riding on a new, individually-designed, American-built road bike.

The $13,000 Trek bike, a replica of the one used by Lance Armstrong in his Tour de France triumph last year, weighs a just-legal 6.9kg.

His time trial machine, also a replica of those used by Armstrong and his Discovery Channel team, is worth $17,000. "This is the lightest bike I have ever had," said McCauley when he was presented with his specially-prepared machine finished in black and white.

"It is the same as Armstrong had only mine is slightly faster," he joked before preparing for a training spin yesterday afternoon.

He will ride it in the weekly criterium series in Auckland on Thursday night before heading for the Tour of Wellington where he expects to undertake a domestique role for a number of the Commonwealth Games-bound cyclists in what shapes as a strong team.

Determined to get back on his bike, McCauley and his sponsors forked out $3500 for a low-frequency ultrasound machine that sped up the healing of the bone by 40 per cent.

With more than half a million training and racing kilometres in his legs in the past nine years, McCauley has done the hard yards.

The crash, on the early stages of a training ride to Waihi, threatened to end his Games hopes.

"In the end, even though I wasn't supposed to, I had only two days off the bike. I'm now back to 300km to 350km a week and could get back to 1000km before the Games."

McCauley, who has suffered a broken finger and a couple of broken collarbones in past spills, added: "Skin grows back but when you crash the first thing you think about is your bike - and then find out if any bones are broken."

His new bike has some record to match. "I won 55 races from 65 with no did-not-finishes on that one," he said pointing to the bike he had expected to ride yesterday afternoon. "Now I have this one I will ride it as much as I can as long as it is not raining.

"I have had more bikes than I care to remember," said McCauley, who raced professionally in Europe for four years. "But this one looks something special."