The WorldTour returns to Oz: Town Down Under preview

Anthony Tan previews the first races of the UCI WorldTour season – right here in our own backyard!

2026 Men’s Tour Down Under

It’s easy to remember which edition we’re in, because after 2021 and 2022 when there was no Tour Down Under due to the global pandemic that was COVID-19, the last two digits of each year has coincided with the each edition.

So for 2026, we’re in edition 26 of Australia’s premier road cycling stage race.

Over this quarter-century of TDUs during which time I covered more than a dozen editions on the ground, the Tour Down Under has transformed itself from modest beginnings with a predominantly Aussie flavour to a truly international, world-class event.

In 1999 local Adelaide hero Stuart O’Grady won the inaugural race and again in 2001. Together with three other Aussies – Michael Rogers, Patrick Jonker and Simon Gerrans – the quartet nabbed half the overall wins in the first 10 years. Since 2021, O’Grady has also been the TDU race director.

When the race gained ProTour (as of 2010, now called WorldTour) status in 2008 – the first event outside of Europe to do so – thus compelling the world’s best teams to compete, it was befitting a foreigner by the name of André Greipel triumphed.

At the 2009 TDU, as his cachet grew, he famously said “the Tour Down Under was where I found myself”, before embarking on a highly successful career boasting 158 victories including 11 stages at the Tour de France.

Regrettably, the 2009 edition was better known as the comeback race for one Lance Armstrong than for winner Allan Davis.

Given what transpired with the US Anti-Doping Agency’s ‘Reasoned Decision’, detailing the drug-fuelled misdemeanours of the brash Texan and his team-mates in the good ol’ bad ol’ days as well as in his comeback years, he probably wishes he hadn’t stepped foot off his private jet in January that year.

After Greipel won again in 2010, the Aussies hit another purple patch with overall wins in seven out of the next ten editions including Gerrans’ four-peat in 2016; the most by any rider.

Most recently, it was the turn of Ecuadorian Jhonatan Narváez to take the top step in 2025. It demonstrated the team of UAE Team Emirates’ four-time Tour winner, Tadej Pogačar, is not just a winning outfit in July but a team of winners throughout, for they won 16 out of 36 events on the WorldTour calendar last season – a startling success rate by anyone’s metric.

It has been the norm rather than the exception that the TDU is a closely-fought race: in the past three editions, 11 seconds or less have separated first and second overall.

This year it’s hard to say how tight the margins will be. Only that it is likely a handful of seconds will determine the eventual champion from those harsher than I label ‘the first loser’.

“The strength of this year’s field reflects the increased level of difficulty of the courses with longer stages and more climbs,” said race director O’Grady. The 140-strong men’s peloton will include all 18 WorldTeams as well as Swiss-based ProTeam Tudor Pro Cycling and an Australian national team.

The race will kick off with a 3.6 kilometre twilight prologue (albeit on road bikes), and, in an unprecedented move, the fourth stage featuring infamous Old Willunga Hill will be tackled thrice.

The fifth and final stage around Stirling will almost certainly be a race within a race: puncheurs will battle for stage honours while, on the two-kilometre approach into Stirling, GC contenders will mark – or, should they feel opportunistic, initiate – dangerous moves and jockey for position.

Stages to Savour

Tuesday, January 20 – Prologue: Adelaide, 3.6km

Think you can’t lose that much time in a prologue or it doesn’t really affect GC? Think again.

In 2023, the only other time a prologue featured at the TDU, over a 5.5km route, 2’20 separated first and last place. And the overall winner, Aussie Jay Vine, finished in the top 10.

Simon Yates conceded 12 seconds to Vine in the prologue and finished second overall – by 11 seconds.

There are few, if any, other places where you see riders push themselves and their machines to the absolute limit.

Thursday, January 22 – Stage 2: Norwood to Uraidla, 148.1km

Okay, it’s not the Alps or Pyrenees but three big climbs in under 150km including dual ascents of Corkscrew Road (3.67km long, average 9.7%, max 16.2%) – the second summit just a few clicks from the finish in Uraidla – will make this arguably as important a GC day as that to Willunga Hill.

Saturday, January 24 – Stage 4: Brighton to Willunga Hill, 176km

Unquestionably the queen stage.

For the first WorldTour race of the season, to feature three ascensions of Old Willunga Hill – the last two packed into the final 25km – including the traditional summit finish on its hallowed slopes (3.0km, average 7.4%, max 11.0%) is downright sadistic.

Unless you’re watching roadside or on the TV, which is decidedly terrific!

Sunday, January 25 – Stage 5: Stirling to Stirling, 169.8km

It was a summit finish to Mount Lofty in 2023 and ‘24. Last year it was a Champs-Élysées-style procession of sorts in Adelaide.

In 2026 TDU race director Stuart O’Grady has decided to make this year the toughest yet by concluding with a 170km leg-burning stage with nary a metre of flat road.

Given what has come in the days before, it is equal in difficulty to Stages 2 and 4 and may even surpass that.

The climb to Stirling may only be 2.1 kilometres in length (average 3.7%, max 11.1%) – but eight passes and the stark absence of any sort of respite has the potential to cause upset for both stage honours and the overall title.

Riders to Watch

General classification: Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain – Victorious), Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, 2025 TDU 3rd GC), Chris Harper (Australia National Team), Guillaume Martin (Groupama-FDJ), Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG, defending champion), Ben O’Connor (Team Jayco Alula), Nicolas Prodhomme (Decathlon CMA CGM Team), Javier Romo (Movistar Team, 2025 TDU runner-up), Luke Tuckwell (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe), Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates-XRG, 2023 TDU winner), Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)

Sprints: Matthew Brennan (Team Visma | Lease a Bike), Alberto Dainese (Tudor Pro Cycling), Tobias Lund Andresen (Decathlon CMA CGM Team), Danny van Poppel (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe), Sam Welsford (INEOS Grenadiers)

Stage hunters/breakaways: Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility), Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Michal Kwiatkowski (INEOS Grenadiers), Mauro Schmid (Team Jayco AlUla), Corbin Strong (NSN Cycling Team), Simone Velasco (XDS Astana Team)

2026 Women’s Tour Down Under

As early as 2007, in a series of exhibition criteriums around Adelaide, women were racing at the same time as the men, but it wasn’t until 2016 that a women-only Tour Down Under was officially held as a bona fide stage race.

Named the Santos Women’s Tour, it was German-born Australian Katrin Garfoot – who, one year later would be crowned the national time trial and road race champion – that claimed the inaugural event, followed by a hat-trick of wins from Amanda Spratt. In 2020, American Ruth Winder, riding for Trek-Segafredo, was the first non-Australian to win the Women’s TDU.

As with the men, COVID-19 saw racing cancelled in 2021-22; when the event resumed the year after it became part of the Women’s WorldTour. Having taken over as race director of the men’s race since 2021, Stuart O’Grady also took control of the women’s TDU from Kimberley Conte in 2023, who this year is joined by assistant race director Carlee Taylor.

All 14 women’s WorldTeams will be present in Adelaide along with an Australian national team, with most fielding a squad of six compared to seven for the men.

Consistent with the 2023-25 editions this year’s Women’s Tour Down Under will be a three-stage event. Two days after the finish, a separate one-day race in Tanunda will be held and catered for the sprinters.

Unlike last year there’ll be an absence of the full Willunga Hill experience that determined eventual winner Noemi Rüegg, who is back to defend her title – but the final two days are sure to make up for it.

Stages to Savour

Sunday, January 18 – Stage 2: Magill to Paracombe, 130.7km

They don’t call this area the Adelaide Hills for nuttin’.

On le menu du jour are five categorised climbs beginning with the ascent to Norton Summit (10km long; average 4.0%, max 12.6%) right from the get-go in Magill. In the last 30 kilometres the peloton (or what’s left of it…) will tackle the oft-used climb of Paracombe (2.9km, average 2.2%, max 9.5%) thrice, the last of which also acting as the stage finish.

Not a pure climber’s stage, but the winner must be able to climb and potentially sprint from a very reduced group.

Monday, January 19 – Stage 3: Norwood to Campbelltown, 126.5km

Not dissimilar to Stage 2 of the men’s TDU, in that two ascensions of Corkscrew Road (average 9.7%, max 16.2%) must be negotiated, however the women will climb 2.4km, not 3.67km, each time.

While the men’s stage finishes in Uraidla, the women must master the perilous descent of Montacute Rd towards Campbelltown – twice – meaning the overall winner must be very much the complete package.

Riders to Watch

General classification: Neve Bradbury (CANYON//SRAM zondacrypto), Marion Bunel (Team Visma | Lease a Bike), Noemi Rüegg (EF Education-Oatly, defending champion), Sarah Van Dam (Team Visma | Lease a Bike), Nienke Vinke (Team SD Worx-Protime), Dominika Włodarczyk (UAE Team ADQ)

Sprints: Georgia Baker (Liv AlUla Jayco), Emma Norsgaard (Lidl-Trek)

Stage hunters/breakaways: Paula Blasi (UAE Team ADQ), Lotte Claes (Fenix-Premier Tech), Chloé Dygert (CANYON//SRAM zondacrypto), Mavi García (UAE Team ADQ, 3rd 2025 road worlds), Barbara Malcotti (Human Powered Health), Magdeleine Vallieres (EF Education-Oatly, current road world champion), Ally Wollaston (FDJ United-SUEZ)