{"id":380373,"date":"2026-01-20T13:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T13:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/380373\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T13:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T13:48:07","slug":"tour-down-under-2026-sam-watson-wins-prologue-over-ethan-vernon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/380373\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour Down Under 2026: Sam Watson wins prologue over Ethan Vernon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain’s Sam Watson won the opening stage prologue of the Santos Tour Down Under for Ineos Grenadiers ahead of compatriot Ethan Vernon.<\/p>\n

British road race champion Watson, 24, beat Vernon by just half a second on the 3.6km race against the clock in Adelaide, South Australia – the first race of the 10-month long UCI World Tour. <\/p>\n

Watson said: “I’m so happy to start the season with a win. It’s amazing to be leading the race. It’s great for myself and the team to start the season like this.”<\/p>\n

British high-budget team Ineos are looking to significantly improve performances this season after a staff and management reshuffle<\/a> last year aimed at facilitating a return to the years where the team dominated the Tour de France.<\/p>\n

In warm summer conditions riders competed on road bikes with rear disc wheels instead of time trial bikes, largely to reduce travel costs for a race thousands of miles from the sport’s European base. <\/p>\n

Prologues are typically much shorter than time-trials and are often not the best indicator of form.<\/p>\n

Vernon, 25, who rides for the new NSN cycling team co-owned by World Cup winner Andres Iniesta,<\/a> is known for sprint finishes and could aim for victory on stage one. <\/p>\n

The Tour Down Under runs for six days, with Saturday’s stage to Willunga Hill the toughest climbing test for the riders.<\/p>\n

On Monday Britain’s Josie Nelson finished 12th overall for Picnic-PostNL in the women’s edition of the race having spent much of the three-day event in the blue points jersey.<\/p>\n

Switzerland’s Noemi Ruegg won overall, defending her title from last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Sam Watson won the opening stage prologue of the Santos Tour Down Under for Ineos Grenadiers ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-380373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}