COVID-19 hiatus gives way to packed month of international races with Bay Crits, Tour Down Under and Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race
Roadside at the Tour Down Under in 2019(Image credit: Getty Images Sport)
A lot has changed since the Santos Tour Down Under and Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race last took place in early 2020, a time when we were yet to fully comprehend just how long the impact of COVID-19 would reverberate. Australia, however, is now well and truly ready to resume its season starting position in 2023, revealing the very first chapter of the racing narrative that is set to unfold through the season.
As the international races return the nation has upped the ante, too, with the Women’s Tour Down Under joining the men’s event in the top tier and delivering even more reason for the best women’s teams and riders to leave the European winter behind. The men’s racing will also give the nation’s cycling fans a chance to cheer on Australia's second ever Grand Tour winner, with Giro d'Italia victor Jai Hindley (Bora Hansgrohe) confirmed as one of the key contenders for the opening WorldTour stage race.
Though, even before the WorldTour racing gets into gear in South Australia, the opening blows of the Australian summer will have already been struck. On the very first day of the year the three day Citroën Bay Crits begins in Geelong and then it is quickly onto the competition to wear the green and gold bands of an Australian champion.
It will then be a quick turnaround for the Australian riders to join the international riders in Adelaide at the Tour Down Under and then the jam-packed January of racing concludes with the one day Women’s WorldTour and men's WorldTour races at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, with its punchy parcours and finishing circuits around Geelong. All up, including the races against the clock, there will be 11 days of racing for the elite women and 14 for the elite men.
Cyclingnews will be on the ground in Australia to provide wide-ranging coverage, through from live reports, results, galleries, individual race previews, tech highlights, news and features but for now let's take a closer look at what is in store this January.
The men's elite field at the 2022 Bay Crits which was run with a domestic field (Image credit: Con Chronis)
What: 3 days of criterium racing
When: January 1-3
Location: Geelong
Category: Elite men’s and elite women’s Pro Criterium
Opening up the Australian summer of racing, and the UCI calendar for the year, is the Citroën Bay Crits which, given the time zone, will be getting underway at the Eastern Gardens in Geelong while those in parts of the US are still getting ready to ring in the New Year. The first of the three days of racing will run clockwise around the 1.92km Eastern Gardens criterium course, for 50 minutes plus three laps for both the men and women. The second will reverse the direction and then on the third the racing will move onto a ‘hot dog’ criterium course on Geelong’s Ritchie Boulevard for an evening finale.
The event which was first held in 1989, will have a line up that includes defending champions Blake Quick and Ruby Roseman-Gannon, now both of BikeExchange-Jayco, with new recruit Quick making his debut for the team at the event. Australian road champion Luke Plapp will also be at the event as will Chloe Hosking, Amanda Spratt and Georgia Baker, who may be racing on the same team as the defending champion Roseman-Gannon but given her turn of speed and criterium savvy could be more than top-notch support. It will also be a career farewell for former Australian criterium champion and Bay Crits winner Brenton Jones.
The event will be livestreamed on SBS Sport's Youtube page from 15:25 - 17:50 AEDT on January 1, 15:55 - 18.10 AEDT on January 2 and 17:25 - 18:50 AEDT on January 3 and of course you'll be able to find race reports and results on Cyclingnews.
Women's elite/U23 race start at the 2022 Australian Road National Championships, won by Nicole Frain (Image credit: Getty Images Sport)
What: Criterium, road race and time trial national titles
When: January 6-10
Location: Ballarat and the nearby Buninyong
Category: Elite men and elite/U23 women, U23 men and junior men and women
The Australian Road National Championships will be back with full force in 2023 as, while still fiercely contested, the difficulty of making it back to Australia through the quarantine system and closed borders of the pandemic prevented some from chasing the national title the past two years. However, with borders open and many coming out with their professional teams for the upcoming WorldTour races it is set to be a packed field, with many riders who were last year absent – including Michael Matthews, Caleb Ewan, Amanda Spratt, Sarah Roy, Ben O'Connor and Jay Vine – all expected to be among those on the start line.
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In a shuffle of the normal order of events, the racing will start with the criteriums on Friday January 6, moving onto the road races through the weekend – with the women's elite/U23 and men's elite race both on Sunday – and then on Tuesday the elite time trials will close the event, which also delivers titles for clubs, para athletes and masters categories.
The defending champions in the elite road races, Luke Plapp (Ineos Grenadiers) and Nicole Frain (ParkHotel Valkenburg) will have a tough job ahead of them, as not only will they be marked riders in the packed field but they’ll be out there on their own, as neither have any compatriots among their trade teammates. Their domestic rivals, and Australia's only WorldTour and Women's WorldTour team – which in 2023 has been renamed from BikeExchange-Jayco to Team Jayco AlUla – will be out in force.
The Tour Down Under domestic replacement race, the Santos Festival of Cycling, in 2022, elite women's field. (Image credit: Getty Images Sport)
What: Criterium and stage races
When: January 14-22
Location: South Australia
Category: Women’s World Tour and men’s WorldTour
The South Australian race is coming back after a two year absence from the international calendar bigger than ever, with the women’s stage race now joining the men’s race on the top tier with the step up to Women’s WorldTour. That will ensure a heavy spread of the world’s biggest teams across both events. The racing begins on Saturday Jan 14 with the Schwalbe Classic, a criterium for the women and men but this is a standalone race, and not part of the overall tally for the tours yet to come. The stage-racing begins with the three-stage Women’s WorldTour event from January 15-17, starting with a day for the sprinters in Aldinga then one for the puncheurs – with a Mount Lofty launch pad thrown in – and a finale for the climbers which includes the challenging Corkscrew Road ascent.
As the women’s race finishes on January 17, the men’s Santos Tour Down Under begins with a prologue before moving on through five road stages that take the racing from the riverside in Adelaide through to the coast, Adelaide hills and wine regions of South Australia. After the prologue the race heads to Tanunda and the Barossa region for a sprint stage, then to the coast for stage 2, and onto a tough series of climbs for stage 3, which should be pivotal to the overall. Stage 4 goes to Willunga, but happily for the sprinters stops short of the iconic climb and opts for a fast finish in the township instead. Stage 5 provides a big finish within easy reach of Adelaide, delivering a Mount Lofty summit finish and final GC showdown that should hold the suspense right through to the very end.
The Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race heads along the coast in 2020, the last edition before two years of COVID-19 cancellations (Image credit: Getty Images Sport)
What: One-day road races
When: January 28-29
Location: Geelong, Victoria
Category: Women's WorldTour and men's WorldTour
After the racing has wrapped up in South Australia the riders transfer to Victoria to get set for a final showdown in Geelong at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race. The women are first, on Saturday January 28, taking on a 143km course for the Women's WorldTour ranked Deakin University Elite Women’s Race, which starts in Geelong and then, in a switch of its usual direction, works its way through farmland hills. Then it is along the scenic but windy coastline and back toward the start finish line before a local loop, which includes the often pivotal climb of Challambra Crescent. After they have been through the loop twice the winner of the race, usually either a solo rider or one launching from a small group, will then be crowned on the waterfront in Geelong.
The men’s race on Sunday January 29 follows largely the same course, with the increased distance that ratchets up the total to 176km coming with the an addition to the number of laps on the loop around Geelong. The elite men’s race will take on four circuits before crossing the line across from the waterfront Steampacket Gardens. While the event came down to a group of two at the finish the last time it ran in 2020, it has more often been a sprint from a select group that decides the winner.
After the seventh winner of the men’s event is crowned the European-based riders jet off to take on the rest of the season, while the domestic ones settle in for the start of Australia’s National Road Series. The 107th edition of the 267km Melbourne to Warrnambool Classic and 160km long Women’s Warrnambool Cycling Classic is running on the very first weekend of February.
Simone is a degree-qualified journalist that has accumulated decades of wide-ranging experience while working across a variety of leading media organisations. She joined Cyclingnews as a Production Editor at the start of the 2021 season and has now moved into the role of Australia Editor. Previously she worked as a freelance writer, Australian Editor at Ella CyclingTips and as a correspondent for Reuters and Bloomberg. Cycling was initially purely a leisure pursuit for Simone, who started out as a business journalist, but in 2015 her career focus also shifted to the sport.
