THE SECOND ACT
At the end of January, Cameron Wurf was at the Erewhon food market in Los Angeles with his wife, Fallon. His phone rang. A perfect excuse to skip the crowds for a bit. At the other end of the line was Carsten Jeppesen, the Team Ineos head of technical operations - and Wurf’s acting manager.
“I needed to speak to him about something else. I was about to call him, and he called me,” says Wurf. “I thought: that’s good timing.”
What Jeppesen then asked him was not what Wurf expected. “He said, ‘You know Kiri is going to stop.’” He was referring to Vasil Kiryienka, who retired in January. “‘And we’d like you to replace him. Are you happy to do that?’”
Wurf - a 36-year-old athlete from Sandy Bay, Australia - had been away from the WorldTour for five years. His focus switched to triathlons in 2015, and he has been racing as a pro triathlete since 2016. Before taking up cycling, he was an elite rower: he raced in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, where he was 16th in the lightweight double sculls. He won the lightweight coxless at the 2003 U23 World Championships, and several national championships.
His last appearance in the WorldTour peloton was on October 14, 2014. It was the final stage of the Tour of Beijing, which he raced for Cannondale, finishing 44th in the GC. In the
