The King of Willunga Hill, Richie Porte, is a household name among roadies — and mountain bikers who follow the World Tour — but he’s not a rider we ever expected to be writing about here on Flow.
Hailing from Launceston, he’s won the General Classification at Paris-Nice (twice), Volta a Catalunya, Tour de Romandie, Tour de Suisse, Criterium du Dauphine, and Tour Down Under (also twice), best young rider at the Giro d’Italia and has a podium finish at the Tour de France, to name a few points on his laundry list of high profile results — it’s safe to say Richie Porte is a pretty good bike rider.
Of course, palmarès on the road won’t get you through a rock garden without a puncture or carrying speed through a berm, and since retiring from the World Tour, Porte has been dipping his toe into the world of dirt and knobby tires. We’ve seen him at the Beechworth Granite Classic, Devils Cardigan, and now he’ll be donning a number plate at this year’s Cape to Cape racing on a pairs team with a friend from Launceston.
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“It’s just cool to do something that I really suck at, there’s something nice in that,” he tells Flow.
From the road to the trails
Starting his professional career with the Tassie-based Praties Pro Continental Team in 2008, by 2010, he was racing in Europe with Saxo Bank. By April of that year, he’d already won a stage at the Tour de Romandie, and in May, he finished seventh on the GC at the Giro, taking the white jersey and the title of Best Young Rider. Talk about hitting the ground running.
Then it was onto the infamous Team Sky, where he’d play a key role in Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome riding into Paris wearing the yellow jersey.
In 2016, he changed over to BMC, graduating from super-domestique to team leader. He was there in the lead group climbing Mount Ventoux when a motorcycle crashed, leading to the infamous images of Chris Froome running up the road without a bike. He found the highest of highs, being ranked number one in the UCI Road Racing World Ranking at one point. He won the Tour Down Under, Tour de Romandie and Tour Swiss in the red and black colours. He also had the worst crash of his career on Stage 9 of the TDF.
His tenure with Trek-Segafredo was short from 2019-2020, but it led to him standing on the podium on the Champs Elysee, having finished third in the Tour — the first Aussie rider to make the podium since Cadel Evans in 2011.
In 2021, Porte would sign a two-year contract with the Ineos Grenadiers (Team Sky with new sponsors), to finish out his time on the World Tour in a familiar system.
In all that time, Porte tells Flow he didn’t do much mountain biking.
“One year with Sky, Pinarello gave me a mountain bike, and I had a couple of Scotts (Sparks) and an old Cannondale with a Lefty. But I injured myself one day mountain biking and kind of realised that even though the teams were okay with me doing it — it happened right before Tour Down Under, which was always a bit of a goal race for me. After that, I thought I should probably just stick to the road,” says Porte.
Since retiring, other than being able to move back to Australia and spend more time with his wife and kids, having the freedom to play around on mountain bikes and gravel bikes without fear of crashing in the leadup to an A-Race has been a highlight for the Launceston local.
Racing Cape to Cape, he’s going in with no expectations or goals. He just plans to immerse himself in a part of the sport he hasn’t really had the chance to since 2008.
“I’m racing with one of my good mates from Launceston, and I think we’ll be a good mix. He’s not super fit, but he’s technically really good, whereas I’m a little fitter, but technically I’m terrible,” laughs Porte. “We’re just going to have a bit of fun and a couple of beers after each day. That’s something I couldn’t do on the road, it’s a totally different vibe.”
Despite arguably being one of Australia’s most experienced stage racers, Porte tells us he has some butterflies going into this event.
“Even though we are going there for a bit of fun, I’m still nervous. I don’t want to ruin it for my mate because he’s really looking forward to it, and I don’t want to hold him up too much,” he says. “It’s just that unknown, isn’t it? I said to my wife the other day, ‘I’ve gone a bit out of my depth.’”
Richie Porte’s S-Works Epic
Porte’s steed will be a Specialized S-Works Epic. With the marbled blue and black paint job, this particular bike is actually a team bike from Trinity Racing — a UCI Continental Team of U23 riders competing across the road, XC, gravel and MTB.
“My ex-manager on the road was Andrew McQuaid, who runs the Trinity team. So when I retired, he gave me a couple of bikes as a retirement gift,” says Porte.
Porte has opted for a Shimano XTR groupset, out back, he’s running the standard 10-51T cassette, which is paired with a 34T chainring. He’s also swapped out the high post the bike came with for a Pro Tharsis 160 Dropper.
When asked if Porte would be running a power meter, he laughed.
“God no (I won’t be running power). After I retired, I was done looking at numbers, so no power meter on my bike,” he says. “It’s nice to switch off and go a bit old school.”
While the Shimano/RockShox combo might not be all that common a sight nowadays, the reason for it is Specialized’s Brain inertia valve.
“It blew me away the first time I rode it. I know it’s a bit of a contentious thing, but for my skill level, it’s been flawless,” he says.
As far as suspension setup goes, Porte tells us he’s totally out of his depth and is relying on help from his local shop in Launceston, Sprung, and his riding mates.
Porte tells us he’s running his brakes ‘Euro-style” with the left brake slowing the front wheel (Ed’s note: this is the way).
The stock Roval wheels have been replaced by a set of Reserve 28 | XC hoops spinning around DT Swiss 240 hubs.
Throughout the majority of his riding career, Porte rode for Fizik-sponsored teams, however on this bike, he’s running a 3D-printed Specialized Power Pro with Mirror. And while saddles were one of the things you could sometimes convince the mechanics to get out the black Sharpie for you, he tells Flow he’s elated to have the option to choose parts like saddles.
“That Power saddle that I have is really comfortable. I had those Fizik 3D printed Antares (saddles), and then to get onto a saddle is just instantly comfortable has been pretty good. I think that’s the thing just to be able to buy your own or have your own stuff. There’s so much good stuff on the market that when you’re riding professionally for a team, you just didn’t have the chance to use that,” he says.
Same goes for the tyres, when the bike came to him, it had a Specialised Renegade and Fast Track combo, but on the recommendation of his mates, he’s swapped in a Maxxis Ardent Race/Rekon Race combo. He tells us he is running tyre inserts with 20 psi in the back and 18psi in the front.
Porte was also stoked on the OneUp EDC tool that Sprung put in his steerer tube, “Stuff like that is just awesome, and you don’t get things like that on your roadie.”
Mountain biking is a whole new world
Heading into the race in Margaret River, Porte says he’s just going to enjoy it as he has with all of the explorations off-road so far.
“I haven’t really had that many hints or too much advice going in. For me it is probably going to be more just don’t drink too much beer after the stage, to make sure it’s still enjoyable the next day,” he laughs. “It’s so different to the world that I was living in.”
He says he’s excited about going into the unknown but also being able to ride an event because he wants to, not because he’s there to do a job.
“It’s a nice place to be in your life to not be competitive any more. I’ve scratched that itch, and I’ll do some events because I enjoy them — but I won’t be racing,” he says.
With that, Porte tells us after Cape to Cape, he doesn’t really have much on the calendar until Devil’s Cardigan in June. But he’ll be doing the short course this year.
“Devil’s Cardigan was such a hard day, I don’t know if I really enjoyed it. I’ll probably just do the shorter one. People may say that’s soft, but I don’t mind being a bit softer these days,” he says.
Photos: Kristina Vackova / @kiphotomedia, Flow MTB