After 17 seasons as a professional cyclist, Simon Clarke will call an end to his career in January on home soil at the Mapei Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race. It has been 22 years since Clarke first came to Europe as a junior and the now 39-year-old explained, "I don't want to be in the peloton when I'm 40."
The rider from Melbourne, Australia, has had all of the ups and downs of a professional athlete over the years. Clarke went winless in his first two pro seasons with ISD-Neri but showed enough progress to sign with Astana in 2011. After moving to the new Orica-GreenEdge team in 2012, he won stage 4 of the Vuelta a España from a breakaway and won the overall mountains classification.
