The 2026 season will see some major changes to the peloton that lines up for WorldTour races, starting with the Tour Down Under.
Cor Vos
Good day, and thank you for opening this second Wheel Talk newsletter of the 2026 season. After looking forward to the Tour Down Under for months, the three-day event was over in a flash, with three incredible stages and that surprise(ish) ending. Next up is the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, but we’ve got an empty weekend before the first WWT one-day of the season. Don’t worry, you can fill that open weekend with the Nordic World Cup in Goms, Switzerland, which starts with a Team Sprint (F) on Friday.
First things first: Should have seen Rüegg coming
When I wrote my preview last week, I wasn’t sure how defending champion Noemi Rüegg would fare at the Tour Down Under this year. Sometimes a European rider will come into these Australian races flying, and it’ll end up being a one-off; they’ll enter the next season with a peak later in the year or not return to the sunny race at all.
Rüegg proved on Monday that her win one year ago wasn’t a one-off when she held off three riders of the same team to take her second overall victory in Adelaide. Matt de Neef wrote all about it after the third and final stage…
How Noemi Rüegg beat three UAE riders to win her second Tour Down Under
The Swiss rider capitalised on UAE Team ADQ’s mistakes to win the final stage and defend her overall title.
My prediction about UAE Team ADQ being the top team of the season, in theory, is panning out already; however, bad tactics can’t win races in 2026. When Paula Blasi, Mavi García, and Dominika Włodarczyk found themselves on the front foot on the final ascent of Corkscrew, their list of mistakes grew. On paper, all three are stronger climbers, and all three should have been thinking about how to NOT bring Rüegg to the line. The Swiss rider is known to have a kick at the end of a hard race. They played the race right into her hands.
It was a finale that reminded me a little of Neilson Powless winning Dwars door Vlaanderen against Wout van Aert, Tiesj Benoot, and Matteo Jorgenson last year, except, of course, Van Aert would have been the favourite going into the finish on that occasion.
It’s always fun after a stage race to look back and think about how differently the race could have gone if one thing had changed. For me, the biggest “butterfly effect” was the strong breakaway containing Loes Adegeest, Chloé Dygert, and Sarah Van Dam that was caught in the final 1 km of stage 2. Van Dam was one of the stronger riders again during stage 3, and ended the race fifth overall, 25 seconds behind Rüegg. If that breakaway had stuck, Van Dam could have landed on the podium at the very least, and perhaps even taken the overall before Rüegg could fight for it.
That’s one of the best things about bike racing. There are so many little moments that make up the whole, so many things that have to go right, and so little control over the outcome. A lot of the time, results may seem formulaic; the same riders win time and time again, but if we look deeper into each event and pick apart moments, it’s easy to find where things could have diverged. One things for sure: Van Dam goes into Cadel’s a favourite, as does Rüegg, who looked incredibly strong in the sprint on stage 2 in addition to the final stage where she won.
Racing continues…
At the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race on January 31st.
Before that, we’ve got the Tour Down Under – Women’s One Day event. You can find a preview in the Tour Down Under preview story I wrote last week.
It’s basically a big criterium, but as Gracie pointed out on the podcast, the roads are grippy, so the course is harder than it looks on paper. The startlist is very similar to the one that lined up for the TDU and can be found here, and it really looks like it’s going to be a sprint, but every potential sprint finish depends on how the teams approach the race. Following the Tour Down Under and going into Cadel’s, some teams might want to really have fun with the race, throw everything at it, while some might be more keen on conserving energy ahead of a long season.
Wheel Talk podcast
Matt de Neef is in charge of the podcast this week as he and Gracie Elvin, along with Grace Brown, break down everything that happened in stages 2 and 3 of the Tour Down Under and what it means for the rest of the season to come. Hopefully, you also caught Matt, Gracie, and Nettie Edmondson’s breakdown of the first stage.
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