Rohan Dennis channelled his anger into sport years before his marriage to Melissa Hoskins ended in tragedy

Years before he faced the agony of burying his wife and the mother of his two young children, Rohan Dennis was grappling with a different battle. The professional cyclist and Olympian, who last month faced court on charges he had caused the death of his wife Melissa Hoskins, has never shied away from talking about battling his own demons. Ms Hoskins, 32, also an Olympian and former professional cyclist, was laid to rest in her hometown of Perth on January 18. The emotional service came weeks after she was hit by a ute on December 30 allegedly being driven by her husband outside their Adelaide home. In July 2019, off the back of becoming a world-time trial champion, Dennis was seen as a frontrunner for winning the Tour De France – cycling’s most coveted trophy. But in the middle of the tour’s first stage, a day before a stage he was tipped to win, Dennis jumped off his bike and abruptly quit. It left his Bahrain-Merida team without a competitor and triggered private arbitration. Exactly where he went, and why he decided to quit his fourth Tour de France remained a mystery until January 2020 when he said he’d quit the race to save his marriage with Ms Hoskins. “It was for personal family reasons between the person I was becoming due to the situation I was put under. The environment that I was in was causing me to be, let’s just say, not a good or a happy person to be around,” he said from Adelaide. “It was snowballing, it was getting worse and, in the end, I didn’t want to be a statistic of a sportsperson who was potentially going to be divorced.” Mr Dennis said it was a “good place to be out of” and revealed his psychologist was considering taking “further action for my mental health benefit”. “I didn’t know about that until two or three weeks ago. When you’re in it, you’re obviously not happy but you don’t realise how bad you actually are,” he said. SBS journalist Sophie Smith, who witnessed Dennis walk out on his Tour De France team back in 2019 summed up her relationship with the pro cyclist. “Dennis is unashamedly a sensitive, one strike and you’re out personality. He can be jovial, insightful and kindly acknowledge those he warrants. If he perceives you’ve wronged him, however, good luck,” she wrote. His former Bahrain-Merida head sports director Gorazd Stangelji also described Dennis as single-minded after the Tour De France walkout. “He’s a special guy, let’s say. All the champions are,” he said. “He’s really 100 per cent when he wants something and it’s not difficult to make everybody happy in every single moment.” Even as far back as 2015, Dennis was addressing how he used cycling to let his “anger out”, describing the sport as his art. “I’ve been known to sort of have a short fuse and I think cycling is the way I let that anger out…my art is cycling,” he said. Then just 25 years old, Dennis also opened up about his struggles in high school, detailing how far he had come as a man and how he’d learnt to deal with his anger – an emotion he later funnelled into sport. “It’s a tough one sometimes to talk about. In the end it was too much to control and it just exploded. It’s almost like putting Mentos into a Coke bottle,” he said. “I’ve had to learn how to let that anger out in ways without exploding but sort of venting it before it gets to the point of overflowing.” In September 2022, Dennis again missed a number of elite competitions across the world and back home. His team and Australian officials said “family issues” had pulled him away from the race. Dennis later clarified. “It is what it is. I’ve got my brother’s wedding the day before of the (time trial) and it’s in Germany,” Dennis told SBS. “I’m going to be his best man. Family comes first, mate.” By February 2023, Dennis revealed in an emotional speech he would be permanently stepping off the bike by the end of the year, retiring after 11 seasons. “Thank you Melissa Dennis (Hoskins) for supporting me throughout my entire professional career, all while raising two of the best kids I could ever ask for,” Dennis wrote in an Instagram post on February 10, 2023. “Cycling, you have given me a lot and I’ll be forever grateful. It is still a long season ahead however it will definitely be my last as a professional.” Less than a year after his tribute to his wife, Dennis would be at the funeral of his wife, clutching their two children and laying a sprig of rosemary on her coffin. At her funeral, Ms Hoskins’ father Peter delivered a tearful eulogy to the packed room, saying her zest for life “touched many people”. He spoke of her childhood and her successes as a sportswoman which took her away from family for more than a decade as she worked and lived overseas. “When Melissa retired, she reset her life goals to ‘its time to be a champion mum’,” Mr Hoskins recalled. “She was so looking forward to coming home, to be close to family and friends and to share the same time zone.” “We are grieving — all of us. We are sad — all of us. There should have been more, there’s not going to be more. But we are left with a lifetime of memories.” Ms Hoskins stepped away from professional cycling in 2017 and married Dennis the following year. The couple were planning to launch a winery and had recently moved into their Adelaide home. It was at that home they celebrated their last Christmas together as a family, with the couple posting a picture of themselves with their two children next to a decorated tree on social media on Christmas Day. That happy picture was included in the funeral montage. 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Rohan Dennis channelled his anger into sport years before his marriage to Melissa Hoskins ended in tragedy

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