As Jay Vine crossed the finish line in Stirling, he didn’t look like a man who had just sewn up his second Tour Down Under title. ‘Who won?’ he asked after greeting his family in the shade.
It had been a hectic race, with many of his UAE Team Emirates XRG teammates crashing out, and the Australian had been downed himself with 90km to go by a kangaroo crossing the road.
With the first WorldTour race of the season now ticked off, we’ve picked out the five biggest talking points and a rider to keep an eye on as 2026 progresses.
Highs and lows for UAE
UAE Team Emirates XRG
Three days into the Tour Down Under and viewers were met with an all-too-familiar sight: UAE Team Emirates XRG dominating. For those who didn’t fancy a 2am wake up call here in the UK to watch the action, Jay Vine and Jhonatan Narváez launched a successful 14km two-up attack (how very GP Montréal of them) to go 1-2 on Stage 2, the first of two GC-focussed days that took the peloton over two ascents of Corkscrew Road. They rolled in together, with Vine taking the stage win and the leader’s jersey, which he would keep until the end of the race.
Stage 4 to Willunga would be the undoing of Narváez, however. On the longest day of the race, a crash would take down the defending champion, thwarting any possibility of a UAE 1-2 overall and forcing both Narváez and teammate Vegard Stake Laengen to abandon the race.
The team’s challenges didn’t end there, as a pair of kangaroos became entangled in the peloton whilst trying to cross the road on Stage 5. Vine hit the ground and was forced into a bike swap but managed to cross the line safely some 90km later to win his first Tour Down Under title. Teammate Mikkel Bjerg was less lucky, the kangaroo chaos leaving him with fractures in his shoulder and hand. It made for a lengthy injury list after a rollercoaster week.
Kangaroo carnage
🦘 A ‘hopping’ mad situation!
🚴 Jay Vine was unfortunate to hit a rogue Kangaroo that was attempting to cross the track during the Tour Down Under! pic.twitter.com/6F5Jdd0Fed
— SBS Sport (@SBSSportau) January 25, 2026
Much of the beauty of cycling lies in its journey through the outdoors, whether it be ticking kilometres off through the Tuscan countryside or catching a tan in Australia. But this does lend itself to outside interference. Animals, cars and protestors have all interrupted races over the years.
While the latter two can be controlled or predicted, animals obviously have no understanding of the fact a bike race is barrelling through their home terrain at warp speed, and unfortunately we had another reminder of that unavoidable truth when two kangaroos collided with the TDU peloton during Stage 5. It was a horrible sight, and reports filtered through afterwards that at least one of the kangaroos had been euthanised as a result of its own injuries. A really sad situation.
Willunga Hill canned
Con Chronis/Getty Images
The queen stage of this year’s Tour Down Under ended up being shortened over severe heat and extreme fire danger. Stage 4, the race’s penultimate stage, was altered to remove the GC-deciding triple ascent of Willunga Hill as temperatures threatened to crest 43°C, cutting 45km and the key climbing action from the stage.
Race director Stuart O’Grady emphasised afterwards that ‘rider and spectator safety is always the number one priority for our event’ and that the alteration came after consultation with emergency services authorities, riders and the UCI.
As a result, the overall podium was sewn up early with Vine, Jayco-AlUla’s Mauro Schmid and Australian Harry Sweeny of EF Education-EasyPost making up the top three on GC. The stage finish then became one for the sprinters – a very different dynamic than usual.
The routes for the Surf Coast Classic races have also been altered this year following a bushfire threat in the Otways region. Calendar changes due to the weather typically occur around the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España, but in future years could soaring temperatures force more regular changes to the Tour Down Under? It’s something to keep an eye on.
Liftoff for Sam Welsford and Ineos Grenadiers
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Ineos Grenadiers are not a sprinter’s team. They don’t have the experience of Soudal-QuickStep or pack multiple cards to play such as Alpecin-Premier Tech. They tried to experiment with the signing of Caleb Ewan last year only for the Aussie to retire five months into the year.
Still, Sam Welsford joined the team from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe this winter, leaving behind a squad that was becoming even more GC-centred than it already was with their recruitment of Remco Evenepoel. Welsford is now working under the eye of former Ineos sprinter turned sports director Elia Viviani and the new head of racing Geraint Thomas following the Welshman’s own retirement from the pro peloton last year.
His first opportunity to shine Down Under came on Stage 1. The Ineos sprint train came to the fore with a quartet of riders in front of Welsford in the final 2km, including prologue winner Sam Watson and the experienced Ben Swift. Despite that, they would be overtaken by Decathlon-CMA CGM, who delivered Tobias Lund Andresen to the stage win. Visma-Lease a Bike’s Matthew Brennan would also finish in front of Welsford, relegating the Australian to third, having been forced against the barriers in the dash to the line.
Fast forward to Stage 3 and another sprinting opportunity. Things were a little bit different this time, the peloton having to chase down a pair of breakaway riders, who still held a 40-second gap inside the last 4km. The last man standing from the breakaway duo, Groupama-FDJ United’s Enzo Paleni, was reeled back under the flamme rouge itself. NSN Cycling Team then tried to take control from a fading Visma-Lease a Bike, with Ineos Grenadiers eventually bringing their man forward in the last 300m through the efforts of Swift and Watson. It was the perfect leadout and Welsford duly scored his first stage win of 2026 by quite the margin ahead of Lund Andresen.
They couldn’t replicate that success on Stage 4. Things got a bit heated in the final 2km as the Ineos Grenadiers train squeezed and shouldered into a gap between EF Education-EasyPost and Uno X Mobility, but in the end their best-placed finisher Watson only came in seventh as NSN Cycling’s Ethan Vernon claimed stage honours. If they continue to work at it, however, all the signs point to Swift and Watson being at the heart of quite the sprint train in months to come.
Matthew Brennan notches first win of the year
Visma-Lease a Bike
Matthew Brennan opened his own account for the year with a sprint victory on the Tour Down Under’s final stage around Stirling. It was a hilly day that looked perfectly suited to the Wout van Aert-esque prodigy and his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates did their part to set him up for success by sweeping up the remainder of the breakaway inside the final 2km.
It would be Ineos Grenadiers’ Michał Kwiatkowski who ignited proceedings – perhaps unaware that Watson was not on his wheel – and the former World Champion ended up providing an ideal leadout for Brennan. NSN Cycling’s Brady Gilmore attempted to go early but Brennan kept him in his sights, reeling him in around the final bend.
Brennan was a name on everyone’s lips for a potential stage win, having already finished a close second on Stage 2. He’s coming off an incredible breakout season that saw him nab stage wins at the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, the Tour de Romandie, Tour de Pologne, Lidl Deutschland Tour, the Tour of Britain and the overall at the Tour of Norway, and big things are expected of him in 2026.
Rider to watch: Tobias Lund Andresen
Con Chronis/Getty Images
23-year-old Tobias Lund Andresen moved from Picnic-PostNL to Decathlon-CMA CGM over the off-season and claimed his first WorldTour victory on Stage 1 at the Tour Down Under after a brilliant display of teamwork, with a sprint train that looked locked and loaded well before they delivered their man to victory.
As well as his Stage 1 win, Lund Andresen podiumed on three more stages and took home the points jersey too. Combine his talents with the also-newly-signed Olav Kooij plus the wealth of other new signings for the team’s sprint train and Decathlon-CMA CGM are well worth keeping an eye on for any flat finishes they target this season.
