The Santos Women’s Tour Down Under barely resembles the race it was when it formally first began in 2016 as a 2.2 UCI-ranked occasion, spawned from what was successfully a group of criteriums.
Initially, the sector was held alongside the long-running males’s race and was round 80 p.c crammed with riders from Australia and New Zealand, with solely a restricted variety of squads making the journey from Europe. Few groups had the power to actually problem the Australian crew that has now morphed into Liv-AlUla-Jayco. The squad dominated the occasion, profitable 4 in a row from 2016 to 2019.
“We had a pleasant stranglehold on the occasion and it was good for us, proper,” the lately returned Gene Bates, who’s now Liv-AlUla-Jayco’s girls’s crew supervisor and sports activities director, advised Cyclingnews with a wry smile.
“But yeah, in practical phrases, it should not be like that. No crew ought to have a monopoly on racing like that, and it’s higher for ladies’s biking normally that the occasion grows and the sector will get stronger,” mentioned Bates, who has lately returned to the ladies’s crew however was the DS via quite a lot of these earlier years of the race. “It simply means we’ve got to be higher and work more durable.”
The phases have advanced considerably, with the routes lengthening, the landmark climb of Willunga launched plus the race class working its technique to the highest tier, hitting the Women’s WorldTour stage when it returned from a two-year COVID-19 hiatus in 2023.
The race, which led the best way when it equalised girls’s and males’s prize payouts in 2019, has additionally drawn much more protection and a spotlight because the years have passed by. There is now not simply the odd journalist reliably going out to report the ladies’s occasion, as a substitute changed by a strong contingent chasing the newest outcomes and developments amongst a peloton that’s now unquestionably worldwide. More than two-thirds of the riders hail from nations past Australia and New Zealand.
A fourth day of racing was added this yr, with the Women’s Tour Down Under operating for 3 phases from Friday, January 17 to Sunday, January 19 whereas on Sunday, January 26 is the Schwalbe Women’s One Day Classic. That is ranked 1.Pro so will yield 200 factors, in contrast with the 50 a Women’s WorldTour stage win delivers, an element which helped sway the choice to go for a one-day occasion.
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“It’s actually essential. We want extra alternatives. We need to have extra groups popping out. We need larger stage groups, and it is exhibiting … we have 10 Women’s WorldTour groups out right here this yr, so that is the strongest area ever for our girls’s race,” mentioned Assistant Race Director Annette Edmondson of the growth within the pre-race media convention.
“And it simply implies that the development of the racing is simply going to maintain lifting, and we’re going to have the ability to hopefully proceed to progress and add maybe one other stage into our WorldTour occasion. But in the mean time, we’re specializing in sustainable development as effectively.”
Many girls’s races have made formidable plans, some have succeeded however there have additionally been quite a lot of cancellations in latest seasons. The Women’s Tour Down Under, nevertheless, has continued on the trail of a gradual construct.
“Changes do not occur in a single day,” mentioned Edmondson, who throughout her racing profession took on the occasion thrice and gained two phases alongside the best way. “We’re very proud that Santos, main sponsor, is de facto prioritizing the expansion of the ladies’s race. It’s thrilling to have a fourth day of racing.”
Even earlier than the riders arrive on that fourth day of racing, the evolution of the three days of the WorldTour occasion is ready to shake up the race, with stage 2, specifically, a troublesome day of early-season racing with a forecast of scorching climate throughout 115 kilometres. After beginning in Unley, the route goes straight into the climb of Windy Point, the primary QOM level of the day coming inside 5km of the beginning. Then the peloton climbs Willunga Hill twice.
Stage 3 contains 5 ascents of the Stirling climb, for greater than 2,000 metres of elevation achieve over the 105.9 kilometres.
No surprises then that there are a selection of robust climbers on the beginning checklist together with Giro d”Italia Women Blockhaus stage winner Neve Bradbury (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto), Tour de France Femmes and Giro d’Italia Women mountain classification winner Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurace-Soudal), Niamh Fisher-Black, who has simply shifted from SD Worx-Protime to Lidl-Trek, and her skilled teammate Amanda Spratt, together with Liv-AlUla-Jayco’s Ella Wyllie.
“This is the toughest tour that we have seen for the ladies,” mentioned Bates. “With two ascents of Willunga Hill, it’s actually going to create some vital GC gaps.”
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