Simon Clarke

As a sporty kid from Melbourne, Simon Clarke discovered cycling at age 10 when he signed up for the Great Victorian Bike Ride, completing the nine-day event on a mountain bike.

At the next year’s event, Olympic medallist Dean Woods saw his potential and encouraged him to join a club.

Sure enough, Clarke began learning the craft of bike racing with Carnegie Caulfield Cycling Club. Within a couple of years, he had won a medal at his first national championships, spurring him to focus on cycling as his sport of choice.

At age 17, Clarke was selected for the Australian Institute of Sport’s cycling program in Italy, where he would spend the next four years.

In 2008, Clarke won the under-23 road race national championship. He raced for an Italian team for the next two years before signing his first WorldTour-level contract with Astana in 2011.

In 2012, Clarke transferred to the new Australian Orica GreenEDGE outfit. There, he had a breakthrough performance at the Vuelta a España, where he won a hilltop finish from the breakaway and took out the King of the Mountains classification overall.

In the years that followed, Clarke built for himself a reputation as a dependable and respected rider with a penchant for breakaways and the hilly classics.

He won the Herald Sun Tour in 2014, then made his Olympic debut at Rio 2016, where he was Australia’s best finisher in 25^th.

In 2018, Clarke won another mountainous stage of the Vuelta, again from the breakaway.

2019 saw Clarke enjoy the best spring of his career, finishing ninth in Milan-Sanremo and second in a famous edition of the Amstel Gold Race behind Mathieu van der Poel.

However, at the start of 2022 Clarke was facing retirement as he struggled to secure another pro cycling contract. At the eleventh hour, he was offered a ride by Israel Premier-Tech. That season, he repaid their faith by winning one of cycling’s greatest prizes.

Clarke put himself in the breakaway on stage 5 of the 2022 Tour de France, which featured several brutal cobblestone sectors. At the finish in Arenberg, with both legs cramping, Clarke edged out his rivals with a desperate lunge to the line to secure a famous stage victory.

At the representative level, Clarke has been one of Australia’s most consistent campaigners. He has ridden 12 elite road world championships, with his best result being seventh in 2013.

He has also been a consistent top-10 finisher at the road national championships, placing as high as second in 2023.

Clarke made his second Olympic appearance at Paris 2024, where he finished 32nd after riding in support of Michael Matthews.