Dutch cycling star Ellen van Dijk to retire
The 38-year-old from the Netherlands has won 70 races in all categories during a stellar career.
This includes three individual and three team world time trial titles, one world title in the scratch discipline, five European titles and a solo win over 139 kilometres in the Tour of Flanders.
"I'm going to retire as a professional cyclist at the end of the season after 20 years," the team Lidl-Trek rider said.
"It's been a big part of my life, a super long career that I feel very thankful for.
"In the last two years I had a lot of nasty crashes and this for sure makes me more scared on the bike in the peloton, and it makes me lose the real love of the road racing."
With 41 victories in races against the clock, Van Dijk is among the greats in time trials.
She is also the former women's world record holder for the hour, riding a fraction over 49 kilometres in 2022 — a record since beaten.
Van Dijk thanked Lidl-Trek for their commitment to women's cycling.
"It means a lot to me what this team did for women's cycling," she said.
"Trek always believed in women's cycling and invested a lot in it and has played a big role in making women's cycling what it is today."
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There were two subsequent top four finishes which both ended with Melbourne going out in straight sets both times, albeit extremely narrowly in 2023, after having lost to Collingwood by just seven points despite having 32 more inside 50 entries. They'd then lost to Carlton the following week by just two points after kicking 9.17. And the past two seasons have been a lot more dire, just 11 wins last year and a finish of 14th, then this season only seven wins, and the defeats including beltings at the hands of lowly North Melbourne (by 59 points) and Essendon (by 39 points). The demographics on the Melbourne list might be a little askew, also. The Dees have the fourth-oldest playing group in the AFL, with nine players on the cusp of 30 or older, a mid-tier group of which several have stagnated, and some promising but still largely unproven younger hands. 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His coaching record of 203 games at a winning percentage of nearly 55 stacks up pretty well with most of his competitors. He is (for now at least) one of just four Melbourne premiership coaches in history. Then again, was Melbourne's incredibly dominant finals series of 2021 one of the greatest premiership wins ever? Not necessarily. It certainly was a great example of hitting a sweet spot at the perfect time, however. Goodwin should be rightly proud of his heightened status in the coaching pantheon. And you can bet he'll get another chance because of it. Yes, even when you've just been sacked, things actually mightn't be as bad as they seem.
Sydney Morning Herald
5 days ago
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Green has bristled this season at suggestions he is the interim president but given the pressure placed upon Smith, the former MCC president and Demons 200-gamer, to step into the role despite his travel plans, the strong impression all season is that the club had been treading water on and off the field. Darren Shand, the former All Blacks manager and motivational speaker whom Goodwin and Pert encountered in New Zealand shortly after Pert's controversial defence of the club's culture in late 2023, was also at the board meeting. Shand conducted the post-season review last year which led to little meaningful change. The football department has been marked in recent years by some strange and at times eyebrow-raising job-sharing decisions. This was underlined again in June when the club's chief communications executive Clare Pettyfor was appointed head of the club's AFLW program with a role in list management after the departure of Marcus Wagner. The latter reportedly navigated roles in both the men's and women's program. It seems unfeasible that Pettyfor can balance three such crucial roles. Port Adelaide premiership coach Mark Williams remains probably the highest-paid development coach in the competition – not unjustifiable given his credentials – but he is out of contract. So is high-performance boss Selwyn Griffith. Credited for his key part in the triumph of 2021, Williams has struggled more recently with the demarcation between his AFL and VFL duties. Williams, with his brainchild Sherrin Precision football enterprise, has also performed the role of goalkicking coach this year. The move of highly rated defence coach Troy Chaplin to oversee the forwards – a change which came under scrutiny from this masthead at the aforementioned breakfast – has not reaped the results hoped for this season. An even stranger double-up was the move to use player development manager Reece Conca as a runner on match days, a clear conflict given he was delivering instructions to players at the same time as he was also responsible for their welfare. The club has struggled with behavioural and cultural problems, including allegations of substance abuse among players. The responsibility of minding Clayton Oliver over his troubled summer of 2023-'24 was handed to the club's popular media boss, Matt Goodrope. Goodrope remains a respected figure at the club from the board down, but surely he was not adequately qualified for the daily role with Oliver at a time the player's life seemed in crisis and he was undergoing direct and regular intervention from the AFL's mental health team, league chiefs, AFLPA bosses and Pert. Coach Goodwin and captain Gawn have been forced to carry the public leadership duties all season and did so again this week after the horror final quarter against St Kilda last Sunday. 'We have been able to go through these challenges before with clarity and strength and stability to create success,' said Goodwin on Thursday.
