Dennis downs Porte at Australian time trial championships, while newcomer Lake shines with bronze...

Fourth time was the charm for South Australia’s Rohan Dennis (BMC Racing) as the two-time Under-23 national time trial champion (2010, 2012) finally claimed the senior crown with a blistering ride over the 40.9-kilometre course in Buninyong, Victoria, at the 2016 Mars Cycling Australia Road National Championships.

The former Hour Record holder beat his new team-mate and defending champion Richie Porte (Tas) by 38 seconds, but it was relative newcomer Sean Lake (Vic) who stole the show with a surprising bronze medal effort just one minute 34 seconds behind Dennis, and 26.6 seconds in front of Orica-GreenEdge’s Damien Howson.

Lake signed with New Zealand-registered UCI Continental team Avanti-IsoWhey Sports after riding his first 18 months with Australian Continental team African Wildlife Safaris, and the former rower even surprised himself standing alongside Dennis and Porte – last year’s winners of the Tour Down Under and Paris-Nice respectively.

“Yeah, it’s been a bit of a surprise,” Lake told Eurosport after completing just his fourth time trial race of his young career. “It’s just slowly sinking in now…a bit of a dream really.

“I sort of had in my mind if things went perfectly, I had about the right horsepower to get the result that I did today, but It was just putting it all together was the issue.

“I hadn’t had really good aerodynamics, but I’ve been putting out good power over the last year. Now I’m finally managing to use that power in a way to make me go fast.”

The 24-year-old Melbourne resident joins an Avanti team that has won the Australian National Road Series (NRS) the past six years, and produced the last three champions including recently signed Cannondale rider Patrick Bevin (NZL).

Including Bevin, the franchise, which dates back to Praties in 2000, has produced nine professional riders, along with Porte, Nathan Haas (Team Dimension Data), Jack Haig (Orica-GreenEdge), Steele von Hoff (formerly Garmin-Sharp, now One Pro Cycling), Nathan Earle (formerly Team Sky, now Drapac Pro Cycling), Will Clarke (formerly Argos-Shimano, now Drapac Pro Cycling) and Brenton Jones (Drapac Pro Cycling), as well as recently retired Campbell Flakemore (BMC Racing).

The team’s legacy of producing ProTour riders is not lost on Lake.

“It gives me inspiration and it’s really comforting to know that I have the right people looking after me,” he said. “Today shows me that I’m capable of what I want to do which is obviously to take it to the next level and become a professional and compete at the top level of the sport.”

Team co-founder and directeur sportif Andrew Christie-Johnston sees potential in the 184-centimetre, 77-kilogram Victorian, but admits Lake still has a lot to learn.

“He was in great form, and his numbers were off the chart,” Christie-Johnston told Eurosport. “We new the numbers would get him a great result but it’s been difficult to get him aero because he’s still such a big unit and he needs to lose some of the upper body muscle mass which makes his frontal area pretty big.

“It’s going to take a little longer to rip the upper body off,” he continued. “Once he doest that and loses a few kilos he’ll be an absolute machine.”

When asked what words were given to Lake after the race, Christie-Johnston said of course “congratulations” were in order, but it was what former alumnus Porte said that had everyone smiling.

“After the race, Richie told his manager to ‘you want to sign that guy now’,” he concluded.

For Dennis, the race was yet another notch on his vastly expanding palmarés.

“It’s always a dream to win the Aussie nationals,” Dennis told media post race. “I’ve won under-23s and now I’ve got a senior medal and to be able to wear the green and gold in every time trial this year is a true honour.

“Obviously Sunday is still to come and there’s still another jersey so we can’t celebrate tonight but we can have a little bit of a celebration and say job well done for Thursday.

The 2015 Tour de France stage winner and USA Pro Challenge race winner, admitted this is the first of several goals set for the ‘race of truth’ this year.

“I put a lot of pressure on myself to be the best at whatever I aim to be at,” said the 25-year-old Dennis. “Rio is my big goal this year, the time trial, then there’s the Qatar World Championships time trial as well, and I’m looking at heading more towards the general classification side of things after Rio.

“Sunday (elite men’s road race) is going to be a bit of a numbers game to be honest with Orica-GreenEdge as always. They’ve got a lot of strong riders, but we’ve got Richie and I.

“It’s a lot like Cadel and I, but Richie and I are strong, we’re one/two in the time trial and I’m sure we can play a good card and hopefully take another green and gold.”

While disappointed to lose his time trial crown, Richie Porte was happy that the national champions jersey would be on the shoulders of his 2016 team-mate.

“Today has been more then what I’ve expected to be honest,” said the 30-year-old Tasmanian. “It was a bit more of a relaxed start to the year. I’m happy to be on the podium and I’m not surprised that Rohan has taken this win, he deserves it, he’s hungry and I know how much he’s wanted that national jersey.”

In elite women’s action, Queensland’s Katrin Garfoot (Orica-AIS) rode the 29.3km course in 43:16 to claim her first national crown a full 46 seconds over four-time and defending champion Shara Gillow (QLD-44:02.49) in second, while Tiffany Cromwell (SA-44:54.10) finished third.