Two years before she was fatally struck by her husband’s ute near their Adelaide home, Olympic cyclist Melissa Hoskins was living in a small European town where a bizarre and violent incident happened.
Hoskins was living in La Massana, Andorra, with her cycling champion husband Rohan Dennis, when local police revealed an Australian national professional cyclist had been arrested for assaulting his wife.
The October 21, 2021 incident, reported in Andorran and Spanish press, as well as cycling media, did not make news in Australia until January this year.
It resurfaced when Hoskins, 32, the mother of two children with Dennis, died tragically after being struck by his Volkswagen Amarok ute near their Adelaide home.
The couple had returned from Andorra to live in Australia after Dennis’ retirement from the professional European cycling circuit.
They had bought a $2.4million home at Medindie in Adelaide’s inner north and had just enjoyed Christmas with their two small children when tragedy struck on December 30, 2023.
Dennis was well-known in the cycling world for his short temper on the circuit and had been open about his mental health issues since famously abandoning his bike mid-race in the 2019 Tour De France.
One fellow champion had dubbed him ‘Angry Rohan’.
So it came as no surprise to some when the Spanish press suddenly reported – the day after Melissa Hoskins’ tragic death last December – that the unnamed violent Aussie cyclist in the 2019 incident in La Massana was Dennis.
Leading newspaper El Pais claimed team-mates of Dennis had privately commented on the identity of the man involved, implying that the victim was Dennis’s late wife.
At the time they had been one of world cycling’s golden couples: Dennis, international cycling champion, and Hoskins, former track champion with the Australian national team and two-time silver medalist in the road test.
The only problem was that it wasn’t true. While Andorran police and media reported that it was an Australian professional cyclist who was arrested and charged, it was not Dennis.
The Andorran incident involved a woman found running down the La Massana’s main road ‘fleeing home after an attack by her partner’.
According to European media, police in Andorra reported a truck driver had stopped to help a woman ‘in shock (who) had called for help on the road’.
The young children of Melissa Hoskins and Rohan Dennis will spend their first Christmas without their mother who died when struck by Dennis’ black ute a year ago
Andorra police reported that the wife of an Australian professional cyclist ran down the main street of La Massana (above) in October 2021 after he assaulted her
Melissa Hoskins in Andorra in 2019 where she and Rohan Dennis lived before returning to Adelaide where she was fatally struck and died a year ago
The woman said ‘she was fleeing home, where she had been attacked by her partner’ in the town of La Massana, with Andorra’s RTVA Difusio reporting that ‘a professional cyclist of Australian nationality and resident of La Massana in Andorra, had attacked his wife’.
The report said she had gone to ‘the road after fleeing from the family residence’.
Hoskins, who had posted images on Instagram of her life in Andorra, and Dennis were, like many professionals on the European cycling circuit, based in the independent principality in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain.
Andorra police arrested and charged the man who appeared in court. But more than one Australian pro cyclist was living in Andorra at the time, and possibly in La Massana (population 7000).
Indeed one such Aussie issued a hot denial he was the culprit, saying he and his wife abhorred violence.
Dennis’ lawyer has also categorically denied that Dennis was involved, and demanded the names of the European media that falsely printed the allegation.
‘There was no incident and no charge,’ prominent Adelaide barrister, Jane Abbey KC told Daily Mail Australia.
‘Mr Dennis has not been charged previously with any offence, anywhere, against his wife.’
Ms Abbey represented Dennis at a plea deal hearing this week over the the death of Hoskins, and it is not suggested that any the incident in Andorra had anything to do with her or her husband.
After Hoskins was struck by Dennis’s Volkswagen Amarok ute last year, she was taken to hospital but could not be saved.
Melissa and Rohan Dennis last Xmas before tragedy struck. Their two children will have their first December 25th without their mother this year
The couple met before the 2010 London Olympics and married in 2018
The couple’s two kids sit in his Volkswagen ute which tragically ended their mother’s life a year ago
Horrific CCTV footage played in Adelaide Magistrates Court this week showed her chasing and grabbing at his black ute in the moments before she was injured.
Dennis was initially charged with causing death by dangerous driving, driving without due care and endangering life, but on Wednesday pleaded to a lesser charge.
Prosecutors dropped the original charges and Dennis instead pleaded guilty to one aggravated count of creating likelihood of harm.
Dennis, known in the cycling world as ‘Angry Rohan’ due to personality clashes and performance disputes in his 15-year professional career, has previously revealed pressures on his marriage and frank discussions with Hoskins.
In 2019, he dramatically quit the Tour de France a day before a stage the Aussie world time trial champ was fancied to win.
Dennis abruptly stopped at a feed-zone half way through a stage south of Toulouse, france, suddenly climbing off his bike and abandoning the race.
Dennis disappeared for hours, prompting his team, Bahrain-Merida, to issue a statement on Twitter it had concerns over his ‘welfare’.
Cycling’s golden couple went on to have a son, now aged six, and a daughter and travelled as a family to Europe as Dennis pursued his career and Hoskins retired to full-time motherhood
Officers retrieve items at the scene of the crash near the Dennis’s $2.4m Adelaide home
The couple had planned on starting their own vineyard near Adelaide
Dennis later turned up at the finish line, but refused to talk to the waiting media.
He subsequently said he’d withdrawn ‘for personal family reasons’.
He had been afraid that ‘his marriage would be ruined by his reactions to the team environment he was struggling to work within’, Nine Newspapers reported.
Asked directly why he left the Tour, Dennis said he was changing in a way he didn’t like.
‘The environment that I was in… was causing me to be, let’s just say, not a good or happy person to be around,’ he said.
‘That team environment… was snowballing, it was getting worse and in the end I didn’t want to be a statistic of a sportsperson who was potentially getting divorced.’
Dennis revealed his wife had started a ‘frank’ conversation with him about how he handled the lead up to that year’s Tour of Switzerland.
Dennis dramatically quit the 2019 Tour De France mid-race and later blamed ‘personal family reasons’
Dennis and Hoskins married in 2018, having met in the lead up to competing in the 2012 London Olympic Games
‘I didn’t realise how bad I was,’ he said.
‘I heard some stuff from my wife about my psychologist, that he had plans to take further actions for my benefit and my mental health benefit.’
But Dennis reported that his psychologist thought he was making progress.
He said since the Tour withdrawal he had come through the bad times and was ‘happy to be in a good place. People around me are noticing that I’m in a much better place mentally’.
‘Family, friends have really noticed the changed since December (of 2019) so it’s been a very positive move and I’m really keen to keep it going that way as well.’
Also in 2019, in an extreme attempt to lose weight to improve his performance, Dennis fasted until he suffered a depression that caused serious eating disorders.
‘I felt like crap,’ he confessed, ‘and luckily I managed to stop in time.’
Fellow rider Alex Dowsett wrote about ‘Angry Rohan’ Dennis after a 2014 race in Glasgow when the Australian confronted him following his victory.
Rohan’s lawyer Jane Abbey KC, told the court: ‘there was no intention of Mr Dennis to harm his wife — and this charge does not charge him with responsibility for her death’
In his book ‘Bloody Minded: My Life in Cycling’, Dowsett wrote that after he pushed ahead to take the lead from Dennis and another cyclist, Geraint Thomas, Dennis had been initially gracious in defeat.
‘Rohan was friendly… generous. But… backstage, behind the podium… Rohan lashed out with a verbal tirade,’ Dowsett wrote.
‘Geraint and I looked at each other. Angry Rohan, generous in defeat but at the same time raging with anger at having gold snatched from him right at the end.’
Dennis and Hoskins married in 2018, having met in the lead up to competing in the 2012 London Olympic Games.
They had a son, now aged six, and a daughter and travelled as a family to Europe as Dennis pursued his career and Hoskins retired to full-time motherhood.
In 2023, Rohan Dennis made what he acknowledged was a difficult decision to retire, but revealed that he and Hoskins had big plans
Melissa Hoskins died, aged 32, in a horrific accident caught on CCTV in the Adelaide suburbs
Melissa Hoskins is farwelled at a funeral in Perth early this year
In 2023, Rohan Dennis made what he acknowledged was a difficult decision to retire, but revealed that he and Hoskins had big plans, including starting their own vineyard and wine label.
On Instagram in 2023, Dennis announced he was in the running for Australian Sports Dad of the Year and ‘looking forward’ to 2024 with ‘more pictures of me with the kids’ and fewer in his ‘bike kit’.
Just two weeks after her death, the couple had been due to be the face of Adelaide’s annual Tour Down Under’s family ride on January 13 through the city’s CBD.
But after Dennis – himself a Tour Down Under winner – had been granted police bail ahead of looming court dates, and was scratched from the prestigious tournament.
As his children face their first Christmas without their mother, one thing Dennis can be happy about is he is not legally responsible for his wife’s death.
Although his lesser charge carries a maximum penalty of seven years’ imprisonment and a five-year loss of licence, Adelaide Magistrates Court this week heard prosecutors accepted Dennis’ plea to the new charge that he was reckless but did not intend to kill his wife.
Jane Abbey KC, told the court: ‘There was no intention of Mr Dennis to harm his wife — and this charge does not charge him with responsibility for her death.’
Dennis has been committed to the South Australian District Court for sentencing.
