Narvaez's triumphant debut with his new team. Highlights of the week in cycling.
Race of the Week
As per tradition, the new season of road cycling kicked off with the Australian stage race of the World Tour, Tour Down Under. The debuts of riders in new teams and the complete uncertainty regarding their current form after the off-season make this race always intriguing to watch.
The overall winner was Jonathan Narvaez – one of those riders who changed teams during the off-season and made his debut in a new club. The Ecuadorian, who transferred from Ineos Grenadiers to UAE Emirates in the winter, won the crucial fifth stage finishing at Willunga Hill, which was key to his overall victory.
Narvaez's main competitor for the overall title was Javier Romo. Two factors determined the outcome of their rivalry. The first was the bonus seconds. Besides winning the fifth stage, Narvaez finished in the top 3 two more times (third and fourth stages), earning a total of 20 bonus seconds. Romo, on the other hand, won the third stage thanks to a solo attack, but apart from that success, he did not finish in the top 3 again and did not earn any bonus seconds.
The second factor was Romo's strategy on the decisive stage to Willunga. The Spanish rider from Movistar was leading the overall standings at that time, but it was unclear why he decided to attack right at the beginning of the final climb when there were still plenty of riders in the peloton. Javier's attack was powerful, and at one point his lead over the chasers reached 12 seconds, but in the end, he was caught.
Romo expended a lot of effort climbing Willunga alone, and in the last few hundred meters of the distance, he fell behind Narvaez's group. The Movistar rider finished fifth, three seconds behind and lost the lead a day before the finish of the Tour Down Under. Could Romo have finished in the top 3 on the stage and not lost any time to Narvaez if he hadn’t attacked so early? Undoubtedly, he could have, so the Spaniard's defeat can be considered tactical.
0The top 3 in the overall standings was rounded out by another rider who changed teams during the off-season – Finn Fisher-Black, who left UAE Emirates and joined Red Bull Bora. However, the 23-year-old Australian's podium finish was not the only success for the Austro-German team in this race, but more on that later.
For the second consecutive year, Oscar Onley finished in the most frustrating fourth place in the overall standings. Last year, he missed the podium by nine seconds, and this time it was just three. Nevertheless, the 22-year-old British talent from Picnic PostNL, who emerged as one of last year's discoveries, starts the season off quite well again.
Luke Plapp finished sixth in the overall standings, despite being considered one of the main favorites before the start of the Tour Down Under. The Jayco AlUla rider also acted irrationally on the stage to Willunga, almost single-handedly dragging the chasing group behind Romo on the final climb.
Another hope for Australians in the home race was Jay Vine, but he once again could not avoid a crash. It happened at the start of the third stage and was quite unpleasant. The UAE Emirates rider managed to return to the peloton and not lose time on the third stage, but the consequences of the crash seemed to take their toll in the following days and noticeably limited the Australian's capabilities. As a result, he finished only 11th in the overall standings.
Last year's race winner, Stephen Williams, failed to defend his championship title. The Brit from Israel Premier Tech finished in a disappointing 53rd place overall, more than 8 minutes behind. His star compatriot, Geraint Thomas, also had a rough start to his farewell season, not even attempting to contest the overall standings from the first stages. However, in recent years, the Ineos Grenadiers rider has not shone in week-long stage races and enters the season quite smoothly, so his failure at the Tour Down Under should not be considered a worrying symptom.
A lot of attention was focused on the Spanish wunderkind Pablo Torres, but his debut in professional cycling was not as spectacular and impressive as, for example, his teammate from UAE Emirates, Isaac Del Toro, last year. Torres finished only 22nd in the overall standings, while the white jersey for the best young rider went to another young talent – 18-year-old Danish rider Albert Viten Philippsen from Lidl Trek, who was also making his debut in professional cycling. He finished fourth in the third stage to Uraidli and ended up 17th in the general classification.
Another rider from Lidl Trek, Juan Pedro Lopez, made headlines for the wrong reasons at the Tour Down Under. After the fifth stage, he was disqualified for a staggering 18 (!!!) “sticky bottles” in just one stage. For a while, the Spaniard even hung onto the organizers' neutral motorcycle.
Before the start of the Tour Down Under, there was much talk about how this year’s route was unusually difficult in terms of terrain and left few chances for pure sprinters. However, in reality, most of the hilly stages turned out to be not very selective. In the end, we saw three pure mass sprints and another almost mass sprint – on the fourth stage, when a peloton of 72 riders reached the finish.
All three mass sprints ended with Sam Welsford's victory. Notably, at the start of his winning second stage, he crashed and finished with torn cycling shorts. Over his career, the Red Bull Bora rider has already secured 6 stage victories at the Tour Down Under and shares fifth place in this statistic in the race's history with his compatriot Allan Davis. Welsford once again starts the season very strongly; the only issue is that in previous years, his successes in January usually ended there.
1The winner of the fourth stage in a sprint from a group of 70 riders was Bryan Coquard. This marked the 53rd victory in the career of the Frenchman from Cofidis, but only 3 of them were achieved in World Tour races: after all, the Frenchman has primarily established himself as a king of secondary races. Meanwhile, Phil Bauhaus left the Tour Down Under 2025 without any victories, although the German rider from Bahrain Victorious finished in the top 3 twice – on the fourth and sixth stages.
Matthew Brennan finished second on the first stage, with the British wunderkind from Visma Lease a Bike demonstrating incredible speed and could have even won if he had entered the operational space a bit earlier. At the age of 19 years and 168 days, Brennan became the youngest athlete to finish in the top 3 of a World Tour race since 1931.
Overall, last season for Visma Lease a Bike seems to have not ended: misfortune, crashes, and injuries continue to plague the Dutch team. Already in the first stage, Dylan Van Baarle crashed and broke his collarbone. Now, the former champion of Paris-Roubaix faces a threatened spring classics campaign.
News Digest
– Slovenia aims to host the start of the Tour de France 2029. Primož Roglič is unlikely to still be racing at that time, while Tadej Pogačar will only be 30 years old, and starting in his home country could serve as a kind of ode to a cyclist who can already be considered a living legend and one of the best in history.
– A new major sponsor is expected to join Ineos Grenadiers soon, which could become one of the title sponsors in the second half of the current season or at the start of the next. Spoiler: nothing will fundamentally change. Ineos Grenadiers has huge management structure problems, and merely