Tour Down Under Preview

36 thoughts on “Tour Down Under Preview”

1. Delighted to be visiting Adelaide again this January – the town puts on a great show for the race. Staying in Glenelg which is an awesome beachside suburb with plenty of things to do for both kids and adults.

   Curious to see how Cam Meyer goes this week. Awesome form to boss the competition at the hilly Buninyong champs last week, he let out an almighty roar of delight (louder than the whole crowd combined!) when crossing the line first to claim the National Jersey. I’d love to see the jersey competing for glory but overshadowed by Yates and Impey in his team.

   Also can’t wait to see Chris Harper in action. Cracking national TT performance but not a real chance in the nationals without any teammates.

   Thanks for the preview – can’t wait to see the first WT race of the year in person!

2. Great to see the race going ahead and best wishes to all in Australia.
   Regards the fires, I read an article where the outline of Australia was transposed onto a map of Europe and the sheer scale of the disaster was brought into sharper focus for me.
   We’ve seen DQS pledge to go carbon neutral (Microsoft too in recent days) and this is an approach that everyone has to undertake now.
   The TdF has a huge carbon footprint for instance and bringing the WT around the planet to Australia has to be addressed too. Otherwise, without such a change, it risks looking like Nero playing his fiddle while Rome burns.
   Sorry to post about the fires at some length.

   • A genuine question about carbon footprint – I understand there is a big footprint involved in getting riders/teams to OZ but I thought this might be offset by how the TDU is staged, with no transfers and stages starting and finishing close to Adelaide.

     Any thoughts on this and also if there are any carbon footprint lessons (good or bad) that can be learnt from the TDU or other races around the world…

     • Flying out the peloton and all the bikes, tools etc will add up. It’s something parts of the sport are concious of and we’re beginning to see responses like Deceuninck-Quickstep, the Tour de France is looking at electric or hybrid vehicles for the publicity caravan etc but it’s small steps. The big question is how much does the sport encourage people to get cycling, does it make cycling look cool to people or does the peloton make cycling look complicated, hard etc? It’s probably a mix of both.

   • There have been several articles about how misleading those Australia fire maps are. A quick Google search will bring up a few. Not that the fires aren’t horrible, but they aren’t the armageddon that some are making them out to be. If you’ve been watching the women’s race, you’ll see that as Inring pointed out, this area of Australia has done fairly well. And right now the temps haven’t been too bad at all.

     On that note, the Women’s Tour Down Under has been fantastic! I’ve managed to watch all three stages so far with a few hours delay, and both the racing, and the coverage, has been top notch. Incredibly close, lots of drama, lots of top notch riding. Here’s hoping Ruth Winder holds on tomorrow, and that the men’s race is as good.

     • I don’t mean to underplay the traumatic losses of life, property or wildlife, but note that 99% of Australia has *not* been burned. Overlaying with a European example, 1% of England’s land area is the same size a half a Luxembourg. So there’s still plenty of Australia to enjoy – come and visit!

       As noted by MJMC above, the TDU is lower carbon footprint due to no transfers. It also contributes to a cycling culture in this country that promotes bike riding – a very green form of transportation.

       And back on the cycling, I can’t wait for the sprint battles, starting with tonight’s crit stage!

       • All the stages are going ahead as planned, in fact the women’s race has already passed through some of the areas affected by the Cudlee Creek Fire on two separate days. Only if a new emergency starts in the area will anything need to be changed, and the weather for the next week doesn’t look like it will go that way.

         The men’s race will have stage 2 start at Woodside (a town heroically defended by the CFS) with a local circuit, will pass through the area on stage 3, and will pass along the northern edge of the affected area (plus through the area burned in the 2015 Sampson Flat Fire) on stage 4.

         There was consultation with local community leaders on this issue, with an overwhelming response of wanting everything to go ahead as planned. It will be a big boost for the local economy immediately, and also a great advertisement to the world that the Adelaide Hills communities are strong, resilient and open for business.

     • It may not be Armageddon, but 12 million hectares burnt this fire season already, dozens of human lives lost and up to a billion animals, as well as 1,700 homes lost in NSW alone, is a little more than horrible, I’d say. And ask my wife, who has just returned from volunteering in southern NSW for the charity BlazeAid, who help reconstruction in the rural and farming communities that have been absolutely devastated. Even my simple road trip from Sydney to Canberra this weekend reveals the scope of the devastation, both by fire and drought. And not to mention the weeks of poor air quality me and my young family have been breathing in Sydney. Perhaps I’m being unfair in my criticism, but anyone who seeks to minimise the events of the past few weeks needs to their head out of the sand. Just talk to your local RFS volunteer.

       • “get their” (edit)
         I agree, though, that the race should go on – any fire-affected community that relies on tourism dollars needs every cent it can get at the moment.

       • I wasn’t minimizing it at all. My comment was to Ecky T that those maps superimposing Australia over Europe or the US, with massive portions of Australia shown to be on fire, have been called out as being misleading and sometimes fraudulent. And many of the people calling them out are in Australia, with the point that grossly exaggerating the fires is not helpful.

         • Bushfires are a part of life in Australia, eg some plants have evolved with seeds that only germinate after a fire. But the scale of the fires and the damage seems unprecedented this time, there’s been a long drought before too which has kept things bone dry. Staying with the sport – which doesn’t matter as much but it’s this blog’s subject – the TDU is trying to contribute with fundraising and publicity initiatives. We’ll see how the Herald Sun Tour works in Victoria as the state has been under a lot more pressure and even if the route ends up being away from the fire, can they use the police to close roads when they might be needed elsewhere, can the road be blocked by the race when it might be needed any minute by a fire truck etc?

3. As happy I am to see a WT race in Australia (my country of adoption for a few years now) the Tour Down Under has always struck me as a strange addition to the calendar. Australia takes sports very, *very* seriously and enthusiastically, but road cycling really isn’t understood here. The only place where you’d expect to have a decent cycling scene would be around Melbourne, yet the race is all the way in Adelaide… To make matters worse, despite absolutely stunning landscapes and typically sunny weather, I never found the place to be particularly friendly to leisure cycling either : bad tarmac, very slippery roads, and very unfriendly drivers (at least where I live, in northern NSW).

   Also, there needs to be a limit to advertising and naming rights for those competitions. Cycling was never subtle in that regard, and I’m well aware that the sport needs the cash, not pushing for “purity” here, but going to the official TDU website is enough to make your eyes bleed – there’s a sponsor name in virtually every hyperlink on their home page.

   • Have you been to the race Lukyluk? What you write does not fit with my experience when living there, or when visiting.
     Of all the major cities in Australia, Adelaide may well have the best terrain for cycling.
     Your comments did align with my NSW experiences though!

     • Haven’t been to the race, unfortunately, but my wife hails from there and I fly there on occasions, tried cycling several times around Adelaide and around the Barossa & McLaren Vale, as well as Kangaroo Island. I always left feeling that the place could be an absolutely amazing venue for cycling, but isn’t, because of the reasons above.

       I’ll admit my experience is limited though, so it might just be bad luck or wrong advice. Also I’m not a local by any stretch, and someone who knows his way around might have a much better time than I did.

       I’ll stress I meant no offense to the region, which I love for so many other reasons, and even less to people living there.

4. The TDU is kind of like what the Vuelta used to be like – only targeted by native riders. It’s these sort of races that really water down the ‘World Tour’ label. For the vast majority of riders this is a pre season friendly.

   • Less so today, it’s been an expenses-paid training camp and holiday before but now if some are using it for training, it’s the same as others using any other race for training. You only have to see the crashes etc as a pointer to the pressure and in the coming days I’ll revisit the UCI points system but you get as many points for winning Down Under as you do for Paris-Nice, the Tour de Suisse and placing a discreet 6th overall is worth the same as 10th in the Tour de France, a stage Down Under gives you more points than one in the Tour of the Basque Country. So riders and teams know it’s a big deal and it’s a clever place to collect precious points. Cycling is a conservative sport and many still have their “the season doesn’t start until Omloop/Paris-Nice etc” habits though.

   • +1

     • Ooops! +1 for Richard S’ comment, sorry.

   • Ironic that you say the most successful race outside of Europe is ‘watering down’ the Worldtour. No one is saying the TDU needs to be treated as seriously as a grand tour. Perhaps a better analogy would be a WC qualifier.

     • I won’t speak for Richard S, but awarding the same number of WT points for a win at the “Vacation down Under” vs one of cycling’s 5 Monuments is just…..wrong.

       • I mostly agree, but that’s an issue of points allocation for one week races rather than the quality of the TDU.

         • IMHO riding around for a week in OZ in January is simply not comparable to ANY of the 5 monuments. After more than 2 decades only two TdU winners also have a Monument win, while none of them have even a single GT victory. Before I get the fauxtrage about dissing the race – my point is not that TdU is worthless, a win there just doesn’t deserve the same points as winning a Monument.

   • Look, you might have a field made up mostly of Aussie’s, but many of them are absolutely flying right now so it’s a solid race for anyone who made the trip.

     Now, with that being said, obviously it’s early (although Larry T is commenting so this definitely must be a real race!) and why would anyone comment that this isn’t as big as a Monument… haha… no non-Monuments are as big as a Monument, that’s why Monuments are called Monuments! Even 100 year-old races that aren’t Monuments aren’t comparable to Monuments.

     This is a solid pre-season race, a great way to visit Australia and I’m pumped for the racing to start! Thanks Inrng for the preview and I’m so glad the new decade of racing has started!

     • Well yeah, it is a solid pre-season race. Just like Liverpool playing Juventus in Los Angeles in July is a solid pre-season workout. But nobody cares about the result. I’m sure its a nice day out for local fans, and the Aussies are well up for it at this time of year, but that’s about all you can say. It kind of has the feeling of one of those post-tour crits when the local rider (Porte) is allowed to win in front of his family and friends. Its along way above the Tour of Saudi Arabia or wherever they’ll be going next I suppose.

     • Gotcha! I wasn’t going to comment on TdU at all based on my “real race” ideas but I was too tempted by Richard S’ comment.
       I put TdU in the same category as the now-defunct Tour of California or the old Coors Classic – nothing wrong with any of ’em (especially if they’re in your neighborhood) but as Richard S says, “nobody cares about the result” and IMHO the winners don’t deserve the same WT points that the winners of MSR, P-R, LBL, The Ronde or Il Lombardia receive. That’s just wrong.

     • LOL – I do absolutely agree that the WT point schedule is bananas! 100% races at the third tier (Tour of Cali, Aussie, Poland, most of the 1-week races other than Paris-Nice, and a few other) need much different point schemes – significantly lower.

       Anyways, with that being said, the result absolutely matters! QS clearly went all in for the win and judging by the quality of sprinters on hand no one can argue this wasn’t a big race.

       In my judgement of the racing season, a win on this level counts as a win. And that’s what matters. Did the Bay Crit the other night count in my books for 2020’s win tally? NOPE, people were on steel bikes for crying out loud, but TDU stage wins count. Nobody gifted the stage to QS today, they went all in and brought riders in solid form.

       • Your “NOPE, people were on steel bikes for crying out loud,” cracked me up! 🙂
         How did anyone ever make it around the block before bikes were made from carbon fiber?
         The same way they played tennis with a wooden racket or flew planes with propellers.
         How long before someone writes, “NOPE, people were on carbon fiber bikes for crying out loud”?
         Thank gawd you still have to pedal ’em!!

5. small question: does the exhibition criterium “count” as an official pro victory in any way? toward standings, etc., or for team bragging rights?

   • It’s on the UCI calendar with a class of CRT. No idea how many points that provides.

     • No points (to cut a long story short lots of pros used to ride criteriums and other similar races and today the UCI has managed to get all these races on their calendar, even the, ahem, fixed ones) but the position on the calendar as the first men’s race of the year and it being on TV makes it a point of interest and pride, it’s an early test for sprinters and their leadouts.

   • No world ranking points for the criterium.

     With the TDU itself being less of a sprinters race than it has been in the past, the big benefit of the criterium is that teams with sprint trains can get the band together and put in their first ride of the year in competitive conditions.

     Non-sprint teams can benefit too, it provides an easy opportunity to get some good photos of the team’s new colours in action with a good background of big crowds along the course.

6. Ewans sprint last night made an impression, especially after spending the whole race tail-gunning. I think it’s fair to say that he’s the man to beat for the sprint stages.

7. I wonder if Porte has figured out yet that being razor sharp up Willunga in Jan isn’t helping his TdF chances… someone give the youngster a nudge please….

   • He could soft pedal up Willunga and it wouldn’t change his TdF chances (he’s never had a chance to win TdF – just purely doesn’t have the legs for it). Honestly, you need to let riders win whatever races they want to win because it adds to their legacy. Some riders ceiling is to win 1-week races plus Willunga each year, others is to win the Tour, others (me) rides to work really fast… we all have our niche.

     • And some of us just wanna have fun 🙂

8. Thanks for the summary Inrng. It’s a shame that a number of obviously Northern Hemisphere based commenters feel the need to denigrate the race. Their loss.

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