For a few years now, the girls’s racing on the Tour Down Below has had the appear and feel of Girls’s WorldTour occasion – prime groups, high-level organisation, reside protection and prize cash that matched the lads’s occasion. This 12 months because it returns to the UCI calendar after two years of absence, it has lastly acquired the classification to replicate that actuality.
The ladies’s Santos Tour Down Below, with the Schwalbe Traditional because the curtain raiser on Saturday, January 14, will ship Australia’s first-ever Girls’s WorldTour stage race from Monday, January 15 to Tuesday, January 17 and its lifted standing – and factors on provide – to assist present a continued incentive for prime tier groups to make the journey to Australia in January amid what’s turning into an more and more loaded calendar of ladies’s racing.
It has been a 12-year construct towards the highest tier for girls’s racing on the Tour Down Below, which began in 2011 with a collection of ladies’s road criterium races received by Chloe Hosking. The following 12 months it grew to 3 races, after which in 2015, the annual girls’s race turned a part of the Nationwide Street Sequence earlier than securing 2.2 standing in 2016 and a couple of.1 standing in 2018, and that was additionally the 12 months that the ladies had been provided prize cash that equalled the lads’s.
From then, the transfer as much as Girls’s WorldTour standing below the guardianship of long-term race director Kimberley Conte solely appeared a matter of not if however when. In 2020 it reached 2.Professional stage however for 2021 and 2022 COVID-19 intervened, and with borders shut, the worldwide racing was cancelled however decided to maintain the momentum rolling, the organisers stored the racing going, delivering a Nationwide Street Sequence race with the trimmings of a top-level worldwide race.
Now with the borders re-opened, the primary Girls’s WorldTour Santos Tour Down Below has practically arrived. Conte has moved onto different challenges, so it is going to be below the stewardship of the crew of Stuart O’Grady, Annette Edmondson and Carlee Taylor that the race, which takes riders from the coast to the climbs, performs out.
Three-time winner Amanda Spratt will return, however as an alternative of heading into the problem with Australia’s solely WorldTour crew to again her, she’s going to instead be lining up with the would possibly of Trek-Segafredo behind her, a formidable crew that has already confirmed its power on Australian soil even when outnumbered after Brodie Chapman swept up the Australian street title.
Add in Grace Brown on the head of FDJ-SUEZ with the dash of French rider Clara Copponi thrown into the combo, the formidable Jayco-AlUla duo of Ruby Roseman-Gannon and Alex Manly plus New Zealand’s Georgia Williams, who’s now using with EF Training – Tibco SVB however is oh so conversant in the roads of South Australia after having spent most of her profession inside the Australian Girls’s WorldTour squad now generally known as Jayco AlUla.
Stephen Farrand and Simone Giuliani will probably be in Adelaide to cowl the race for Cyclingnews, gathering all of the vital information, rider response, race evaluation and the brand new 2023 bike tech.
A stage for the sprinters, puncheurs and climbers
After the curtain raiser occasion of the Schwalbe Traditional on Saturday, January 14 – the place each the men and women race for one hour and one lap over the 1.35km Victoria Sq./Tarntanyangga circuit in central Adelaide – the street phases which is able to resolve the general standings start. It might be simply three phases, however in addition to squeezing within the metropolis, the coast and the climbs, the brand new trio of race administrators have plotted out one stage for the sprinters, one for the puncheurs and one for the climbers to provide as many riders an opportunity to bid for the rostrum as potential in addition to preserve the GC battle evolving.
Stage 1: Glenelg to Aldinga, 110.4km
It is time to head to the seashore for stage 1 on Sunday, January 15, which given the temperatures are forecast to be round 30°C, is sure to be a well-liked place. Whereas the lads’s race has usually completed beachside, the 110.4km stage’s shoreline end is new territory for the ladies’s race. The primary stage of the tour is one for the sprinters, beginning in Glenelg, working its manner via the wine area of McLaren Vale, onto Willunga – however not up the enduring climb – after which sweeping via to Aldinga seashore earlier than looping round via Willunga and previous the coast once more earlier than ending on Snapper Level, Aldinga. It is not a pancake flat day, however there’s nothing that ought to hassle the sprinters an excessive amount of with the most important ascent of the day, Chaffeys climb with a mean gradient of 5.9%, coming at little greater than 30km into the racing. There will probably be Queen of the Mountain factors out there there, plus dash factors on provide at 53.8km and 93.2km in Willunga, however after all, the dash the place everybody will probably be trying to make the actual mark will unfold in Aldinga.
Stage 2: Birdwood to Uraidla, 90km
Birdwood has served as a venue for the stage end of the final two editions of the race, with Spratt taking a solo win there in 2020, however this time on Monday, January 16 it’s the place the riders will probably be lining as much as set off for a brief however difficult stage 2. Do not let the 90km distance idiot you, this will probably be no straightforward day of racing. It’s marked out as one for the puncheurs because it ventures into the Adelaide Hills. The primary climbing problem comes at North East Ridge, brief at lower than a kilometre and averaging 5.9%, however the part with a most gradient of 15.6% will ship some ache. It will likely be a extra sustained effort, nevertheless, when the race reaches Mount Lofty, which may even be the centrepiece for the lads’s last stage later within the week, however the distinction is that the ladies will deal with it simply as soon as however from a unique path. Climbing the again means tackling the steeper gradients, with the 6.1km climb delivering a mean gradient of 4 p.c however with stinging sections and a most of 14.4%. Given it is a climb that summits simply ten kilometres from the end, it’s also probably to supply an excellent launching level and manner for the general contenders to begin stretching these gaps.
Stage 3: Adelaide to Campbelltown, 93.2km
The ultimate deciding stage is unequivocally firmly slated as one for the climbers, taking in 1,773 metres of vertical ascent throughout 93.2km. And for the primary time, the ladies’s race will tackle the robust Corkscrew Street climb. Stage 3 begins within the coronary heart of Adelaide, heading out to Cudlee Creek, Lobethal and the stage 2 begin location of Birdwood earlier than looping again to Gumeracha and heading again towards Adelaide and the brutal climb, which may properly resolve the race. The ascent of Corkscrew street tops out simply 7.5km from the ultimate end line, and it’s a 2.3km ascent that has the potential to do some critical injury, particularly after a day the place the street has served up an everyday dose of brief however leg taxing ascents. It might attain a most elevation of simply 499m, however its common gradient of 9.2 p.c and a most of 24.4 p.c is sure to have many riders trying forlornly for extra gears. Those that like their climbs brief and sharp will then be hitting the highest and hoping to keep up their benefit via the downhill run to the tip in Campbelltown, to allow them to safe a stage victory and maybe even the ochre jersey of the race chief as properly.
Riders
This can be a world occasion, however there isn’t a doubt the Australian riders in any crew entered clamber to get a place on the beginning checklist to allow them to get the uncommon alternative to race on residence soil, with their household and buddies cheering on. Then if their crew doesn’t occur to be coming, there’s a scramble to safe a spot on the Australian crew. Add the 2 Australian-based groups which have managed to safe a spot, the brand new continental squad Staff BridgeLane and ARA Skip Capital, and the beginning checklist is properly over a 3rd Australian.
It must be no shock then that the Australian riders closely populate the ranks of the favourites. Firstly it’s arduous to go previous three-time winner Amanda Spratt. Her current seasons haven’t been the best, with no victories in sight since she took out stage 2 of this race in 2020, however now that she’s addressed her Iliac artery endofibrosis and had time to get better, plus has the impetus of a brand new crew in Trek-Segafredo, there’s each probability this may very well be a renaissance for the rider from New South Wales who has twice stood on the elite street race World Championship podium. The 35-year-old was clearly in good type on the Australian Street Championships, prepared to leap on the strikes as her new teammate Brodie Chapman set off solo to take victory after which dash to 3rd place. On that observe, too, with the brand new Australian champion by her aspect, that will probably be both glorious assist or one other sturdy choice to chase outcomes for the crew.
They’re sure to have a battle on their fingers, nevertheless, as Australia’s solely Girls’s WorldTour crew Jayco AlUla have at all times gone all out to take victory at their residence race – the three titles of Spratt, who spent 11 years with the squad are testomony to this. Ruby Roseman-Gannon, who swept up the title within the Santos Pageant of Biking final 12 months, the home substitute occasion for the cancelled Tour Down Below, is a chief candidate for the crew, however so is Alex Manly, who proved her GC power by taking victory on the Lotto Thüringen Girls Tour in 2022.
Then there’s Grace Brown, who was a large menace on the beginning checklist of the Australian Nationwide Championships street race and secured second place even when she was lining up and not using a single teammate, Together with her FDJ-SUEZ crew behind her, she is a presence that looms even bigger and be careful on the sprinters’ phases for her teammate Clara Copponi, who final 12 months swept up her first Girls’s WorldTour win on the Girls’s Tour and can make sure to be trying to find the following one.
EF Training Tibco-SVB’s Lauren Stephens will probably be one to look at for the general, with the rider from america having come fourth in 2020 and second in 2018, whereas her teammate Krista Doebel-Hickok will probably be one to look at on the climbs, as will her teammate from New Zealand Georgia Williams, an everyday on the race together with her former Jayco crew. The brand new ZAAF girls’s crew may even be one to look at, with Australian riders Danielle De Francesco and Lizzie Stannard placing on a transparent present of power and type with their repeated assaults within the Australian Championships street race, whereas the Australian nationwide crew will probably be lining up with a robust group of riders, their regular commerce groups absent, from former Australian champion Nicole Frain to seasoned skilled Rachel Neylan, who got here third general in Adelaide in 2019.
There are solely six Girls’s WorldTour groups on the roster in 2023, and whereas it could have been good if extra had made the journey to Australia, the flip aspect is that – in contrast to within the males’s occasion – meaning there’s additionally room for Australian groups exterior the highest tier past the nationwide squad to search out room on the beginning line, offering a uncommon alternative for up and comers to make their mark.
ARA Skip Capital will probably be lining up together with the brand new Australian UCI squad, Staff BridgeLane, which was partly supported by crowdfunding in a bid to extend the alternatives for the nation’s feminine cyclists as they try to bridge to the European skilled peloton. Riders to look at from BridgeLane embrace Emily Watts, who received the primary stage of the Santos Pageant of Biking final 12 months, and Keely Bennett, who got here second in a stage of the Bay Crits earlier this month, standing on the rostrum between Roseman-Gannon and Chloe Hosking.
