The Tour Down Under, the first WorldTour event, starts in Antipodes

While cyclists in Europe are mainly racing in the Superprestige cyclocross races, the Festival of Cycling starts in Australia, which includes two WorldTour races.

Who will be at the start? World champions, homegrown Australian stars and top young talent. With the return of the road season and WorldTour races, the start lists for the men’s and women’s Tour Down Under have been revealed. The event kicks off on January 12 with three stages in the women’s race and the men’s race follows with a six-day stage race from January 16-21.

Favourites will include Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-QuickStep), the outstanding Australian spurter with Korean roots Caleb Ewan (Jayco AlUla) and Italian time trialist Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers).

They will be joined by other big names. For example, British stage-winning specialist and 2018 Vuelta overall winner Simon Yates (Jayco AlUla), last year’s British and European individual time trial champion Josh Tarling (Ineos Grenadiers) and Eritrean rider and Giro d’Italia stage winner Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty). The latter two are making their debuts in the race.

“In Caleb Ewan and Elio Viviani we have some of the best sprinters of all time and I’m particularly excited to see what Julian Alaphilippe is doing in Adelaide,” Santos Tour Down Under Race Director Stuart O’Grady told OAM in the Australian press.

The defending champion of last year’s win, 20-year-old Australian JayVine of UAE Emirates, will not start because he is concentrating on the Giro d’Italia and focusing on other races in the 2024 season.

Simon Yates, second in this stage race in 2023, will lead the Jayco AlUla stable along with new singer Luke Plapp after the young Australian talent switched from England’s prominent Ineos stable to the “home” Australian Jayco AlUla. He is the 2021 Australian individual time trial champion and the 2022 and 2023 national road race champion.

Caleb Ewan will be the obvious choice for sprint finishes after returning to Australian outfit Jayco AlUla after five seasons with Lotto-Soudal/Dstny and will be looking to reassert his top-level sprint form that has seen him consistently win Grand Tour stages.

The nine-time stage winner Down Under will have strong competition from former stage winners Elia Viviani (Ineos Grenadiers) and twenty-nine-year-old German rider Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious). Newcomer Sam Welsford will be looking to show off his home country Australian, who has moved from one German stable, DSM, to the stronger Bora-Hansgrohe. In addition, he will be racing with Bora-Hansgrohe’s star leader, 30-year-old Dutchman Danny van Poppel.

The previous three winners of the women’s stage race will be at the start – Grace Brown (FDJ-SUEZ), Amanda Spratt (Lidl-Trek) and Ruth Edwards (née Winder). They will be joined by a host of top talent from the women’s peloton, the biggest being world time trial champion Chloe Dyger. The 26-year-old American (from the Canyon SRAM stable) will be making her first appearance at the Tour Down Under since the 2017 edition, when the race was run in a lower category.

Australian outfit Jayco AlUla brings a strong line-up of six women including Alexandra Manly, Ruby Roseman-Gannon and new Kiwi signing Ella Wyllie, who finished second in the white jersey competition at the last Tour de France Femmes.

The women’s peloton also has a record number of teams and international riders, supporting the UCI’s goal of continued growth in the women’s peloton, which has 96 riders ready for the start of the women’s race in Hahndorf, while 140 men are provisionally entered for the January 16 start from Tanunda.

Source: Cycling News, Tour Down Under