An all-Australian squad will take the beginning for Workforce BikeExchange-Jayco on the four-day 2023 Girls’s Santos Tour Down Underneath, January 14-17. Main the cost are Commonwealth Video games highway race gold medalist Georgia Baker and Lotto Thüringen Women Tour GC winner Alexandra Manly.
Each riders have been among the many Australian lineup that received bronze within the combined workforce time trial ultimately yr’s UCI Highway World Championships in Wollongong. In addition they carried out on the observe on the Tokyo Olympic Video games, each participating within the Workforce Pursuit with Australia ending fifth.
“I’m tremendous excited to race the Santos Tour Down Underneath in January and for me personally, it’s actually particular because the race is in my hometown of Adelaide,” stated Manly, who dominated the Lotto Thüringen Women Tour by profitable 4 of the six phases. She additionally received a stage of the Tour of Scandinavia.
“It’s very nice lining up with an all-Australian workforce, as that is the occasion the place we have now been uncovered to the most effective cyclists on the earth and it’s ignited the skilled dream in lots of riders. Hopefully the house benefit will assist.”
Baker brings her expertise as a high sprinter again to her dwelling stage race, the place she final raced in 2018 beneath the GreenEDGE Biking banner as Orica-Scott. She earned 9 top-five UCI performances in 2022, together with the Commonwealth Video games highway victory and a runner-up end within the prologue on the Giro d’Italia Donne. On the Santos Competition of Biking in January she received the ladies’s criterium.
The Workforce BikeExchange squad has a complete of seven Australian riders on its 15-rider workforce for subsequent season. Becoming a member of Manly and Baker at Tour Down Underneath are 2022 Santos Competition of Biking winner Ruby Roseman-Gannon, veteran Jessica Allen, who begins her seventh full season with the GreenEDGE programme, and debutants Georgie Howe and Amber Pate. Not chosen for the stage race was Alyssa Polites, the youngest rider on the workforce at age 19.
“I’ve been part of the occasion through the years and have witnessed its progress, so to see it now elevated to UCI WorldTour stage for 2023 it’s actually one thing particular,” added Manly, who took half in her first Tour Down Underneath with GreenEDGE in 2017. She adopted that look in 2018 to complete sixth in youth classification at age 22.
The ladies’s Tour Down Underneath returns in a giant manner after a two-year pause because of the international coronavirus pandemic, upgraded to the highest tier of racing after the primary 5 editions. The 2023 version serves because the lead-off occasion for the Girls’s WorldTour calendar and is the one UCI Girls’s WorldTour stage race within the southern hemisphere.
“Having a UCI Girls’s WorldTour race in South Australia exhibits the expansion of the Santos Tour Down Underneath. We’re proud to current a difficult occasion on the world stage for these spectacular Australian athletes,” stated Stuart O’Grady, the race director for the Tour Down Underneath, in a press assertion.
“Our phases will actually play to Alex Manly’s strengths, however any rider on this roster may very well be in rivalry for the ochre jersey. GreenEDGE Biking’s ladies’s workforce has received the general title 4 occasions and will definitely be chasing one other alternative in entrance of their dwelling crowd.”
