Camperdown's Bailey McDonald aiming high after elbow injury

The 20-year-old, who spent 10 weeks contesting kermesse races in Belgium earlier in 2023, was caught in a mass pile-up in stage one of the Cycle Sunshine Coast event on October 19.

"A guy hit a pothole and his tyre exploded and brought about 20 of us down and I just got sent into the ditch and sliced my arm up on the edge of the road unfortunately," McDonald told The Standard.

"It was a pretty big crash."

A sizeable chunk was taken out of McDonald's elbow however he continued for another 30 kilometres before he was forced to pull out.

The National Road Series team NCMG Criterion Racing member had stitches to repair the wound and has been monitoring it each day since and riding on the indoor trainer instead.

"(I'm) just trying to avoid injuring it further for this week at the moment and then I'll try to get back to normal training next week hopefully," McDonald said.

"There's not much mercy in this game but it's sort of part of the job I guess."

Unfortunately, the injury scuppered McDonald's plans to ride in the iconic Tour of Southland in New Zealand which begins on October 29.

The former Camperdown College student, who resides in Brisbane, was set to guest ride for a New Zealand team and was flying out on Thursday.

He said there were a few small events in Queensland towards the end of the year but he was firmly focused on nationals in Ballarat in January, where he will compete in the under 23 time trial and road race.

"It's just been pretty much working towards that essentially since I got home from Europe," he said.

"I've made some coaching changes up here and I train with a new group now and it's all systems go towards nationals.

"It's arguably the most important event as an under 23 in Australia, so you have to be firing so everything's building towards January at the moment."

McDonald is aiming to reach the podium or win the time trial.

"That's what everything's centred around, each and everyday at the moment, it's what gets you out of bed in the morning and that's the biggest goal, the time trial," he said.

"Obviously the road race would be nice as well but I may have to play a team role in the road race or there's so many scenarios that can play out that it's a hard one to predict. But the time trial's what we're going after and I want a really big result in that."

Reflecting on his time in Belgium, McDonald described it as a "cool experience" he would benefit from.

He was pleased with his results, saying he secured "a lot of top-20s, a couple of near top-10s and a few breakaways".

"It's like club racing in Australia on steroids, (that) is the easiest way to describe it," he said.

"You show up on a random Tuesday afternoon and there's 100 guys who are ready to race full gas for two-and-a-half, three hours.

"That happens two, three, four times a week, you can really race as much or as little as you want. It was a great opportunity to go over there and it really allowed me to get some great experience in larger field sizes where there's a lot more depth than there is in Australia.

"The talent pool probably isn't drastically greater but there's just so many more guys on a good level which makes it so much more competitive and so much harder to win. It was such a good experience and I certainly learnt a lot that will help me in the coming years."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: