Darren Smith

Darren Smith

To person
Full name	Darren Ross Smith
Nickname	Smithy
Date of birth	September 21, 1972
date of death	17th November 1992
nation	Australia
discipline	Road cycling
Societies)
	Gold Coast Cycling Club
Team (s)
1991-1992	Giant AIS

Darren Ross Smith (born September 21, 1972 , † November 17, 1992 in Yatala ) was an Australian cyclist .

Darren Smith started cycling as a BMX rider. He contested his first big race in road cycling in the spring of 1991 with the Commonwealth Bank Cycle Classic in Sydney , in which he finished second behind the German Thomas Liese . In 1992 he was third in the overall ranking of the Tour of Sweden .

Also in 1992, Smith started at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona in the road race and finished 16th; at 19 he was the youngest of the top 20 drivers in the race. Lance Armstrong , who finished 14th in this race, had predicted that he would be the winner. Because of his excellent performance at a young age, Darren Smith was considered a great hope for Australian cycling.

Three months after the Olympics, Darren Smith was hit by a truck while training on the road near the Gold Coast . He was dead instantly.

The Darren Smith Memorial Route on the Gold Coast between Coolangatta and Paradise Point commemorates him. In his honor, the targeted Gold Coast Cycling Club annually since 1994, the criterion Darren Smith Cycling Classic from which Smith's best friend Robbie McEwen won three times. In a few years, the Australian Institute of Sport presented the Darren Smith Memorial Scholarship Award for Road Cycling to young cyclists, including later successful cyclists like Luke Durbridge .

Web links

• Darren Smith in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Darren Smith in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Jacquelin Magnay: Olympic Cyclist Dies After Being Hit By Truck. Sydney Morning Herald, November 18, 1972, accessed August 8, 2014 . 
2. ↑ Karin Adam / Bern Young: Australian Darren Smith 'could have won the Tour de France'. ABC Gold Coast, July 25, 2014, accessed August 8, 2014 . 
3. ^ The Darren Smith Classic. (No longer available online.) Gold Coast Cycling Club, archived from the original on Aug. 9, 2014 ; accessed on August 8, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Past Winners. (No longer available online.) Australian Sports Commission, archived from the original on Aug. 9, 2014 ; accessed on August 8, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.