The Australian summer season {of professional} highway racing has ended on a prime. The sweep from west to east – that began in Perth with the nationwide identify chase and persisted in South Australia on the Santos Excursion Down Below, resulted in Geelong with the Cadel Evans Nice Ocean Highway Race.
The general week of racing incorporated the Surf Coast Vintage, added for the ladies in addition to the lads in 2025. In each races all of it got here all the way down to a dash in Torquay, regardless that now not with no battle, as Best friend Wollaston (FDJ-Suez) and Tobias Lund Andresen (Picnic Put up NL) claimed the highest steps on Wednesday and Thursday.
The weekend delivered the primary occasions, the ladies’s and males’s WorldTour Cadel Evans Nice Ocean Highway Race, the primary one-day races of the 2025 WorldTour.
The 142km girls’s race was once on Saturday and was once raced in moderately gentle 27°C. The peloton was once torn to shreds ahead of the end at the waterfront in Geelong however the specter of a dash remained and Wollaston made it two for 2.
For Sunday’s males’s race, the temperature touched 40°C, including an enormous further problem on best of the already exhausting 184km direction.
As standard, it was once a race that threw up some surprises, with Challambra Hill making the race unpredictable to the remaining gasp as soon as once more.
Learn on for 5 of the conclusions we drew from the 4 days of UCI racing around the males’s and ladies’s peloton.
Elevating the bar with the Surf Coast Vintage
The assaults by no means stopped all over the lads’s Surf Coast Vintage (Symbol credit score: Getty Photographs)
There was once no doubting that each the ladies’s and males’s peloton got here to the road able to race the 1.1 Surf Coast Vintage, with the assault and cut up stuffed racing proper from the cruel climb out from the beginning within the coastal the city of Lorne a transparent indicator of simply how critically the fields have been taking the mid-week foray.
The ladies have been taking at the 118km tournament for the primary time, including further UCI issues doable with 125 up for grabs for the winner of the 1.1 race, in comparison to the 400 on be offering in Saturday’s Ladies’s WorldTour race.
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As the ladies’s Australian summer season of racing is development – with the Excursion Down Below additionally this 12 months including a 1.Professional race – so is the energy of the sphere, with 10 Ladies’s WorldTeams at the startlist this 12 months.
What’s extra there could also be extra issues up for grabs subsequent 12 months throughout each the ladies’s and Thursday’s 157km males’s Surf Coast Vintage subsequent 12 months, with race director Scott Sunderland outlining that the objective for 2026 was once for each the races to be UCI ProSeries occasions in 2026.
That can up the providing to 200 issues for the winners, turning in one more reason for the highest girls’s groups to return out and bolster the fields for the entire summer time and in addition an added incentive for extra of the lads’s WorldTeams to stick at the Excursion Down Below.
The velocity of 13 in opposition to one
Tobias Lund Andresen beat Sam Welsford to win the lads’s race (Symbol credit score: Dario Belingheri/Getty Photographs)
Six of the lads’s WorldTour groups could have made up our minds to not keep on after the obligatory tournament of the Excursion Down Below however the opening volley served up by means of the smaller box on the Surf Coast Vintage wasn’t any much less motivated, actually judging by means of the velocity those that remained have been motivated than ever to stroll away with a outcome.
Consequently it wasn’t simply any outdated goal in-form sprinter Sam Welsford (Pink Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) had, figuratively, painted on his again in the beginning of the Surf Coast Vintage – it was once a vibrant flashing neon one.
The rider was once recent from 3 level victories on the males’s Santos Excursion Down Below, and a few extra ahead of, so the most obvious downside for each and every workforce with a sprinter was once simply how they might beat Welsford and his dialled lead out educate.
“I think everybody knew that if we’re going to have an easy race, it would be easy game for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, and so everybody tried to make it a bit harder for them,” said third placed Lidl-Trek rider Tim Torn Teutenberg.
The thirteen teams versus one tactic left Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe constantly having to expend energy on the chase and hurt Welsford and ultimately ended his hot streak of sprint wins. Welsford joked that it was ‘Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe versus the world’.
It also had another consequence, a scorching pace, with the average speed of the winning rider Tobias Lund Andresen (Picnic PostNL) at 48km for the 157km event.
To put that in perspective, according to Pro Cycling Stats the average race speed of WorldTour Classics last year was 43.2 kph.
The Kiwi calvacade
Aaron Gate within the New Zealand nationwide champion’s jersey (Symbol credit score: Getty Photographs)
Cycling may be a sport centred in Europe, but the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race this year was all about New Zealand.
The list of key contenders from the nation was long, from defending champion Laurence Pithie (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Ally Wollaston (FDJ-Suez), Corbin Strong (Israel-Premier Tech), Niamh Fisher-Black (Lidl-Trek) and her brother Finn Fisher-Black (Bora-Hansgrohe) and more.
And in a notoriously unpredictable race, New Zealand ended up taking half the podium spots across the men’s and women’s WorldTour race.
First it was Wollaston, who showed that she was “not just a sprinter” when she won Surf Coast Classic win of Wednesday and then the WorldTour race too, neatly managing the field-splitting Challambra climb.
On Sunday Swiss national champion Mauro Schmid finally added a Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race win to Jayco-AlUla’s palmares but it was the silver fern-clad Aaron Gate (XDS Astana) who claimed second and defending champion Pithie was third.
After that display it’s fair to say the battles to win the New Zealand road titles between February 6-8 are bound to be ‘choice’.
Feeling the heat
(Symbol credit score: Getty Photographs)
The summer weather in Victoria can be unpredictable, a fact which the riders at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in 2025 know too well.
They came into temperatures at 42°C on Monday as they transferred from Adelaide, raced midweek at the Surf Coast Classic in temperatures about half of that and then it was back to around 40°C for the race on Sunday, with the chance of thunderstorms also in the forecast.
Daunting conditions but the heat was also a welcome turn for some after the men’s peloton mostly missed the warmer race days in Adelaide.
“I mean, we’ve been in Aussie for nearly three weeks and haven’t had a hot day, so it’s good to finally have the sun out and hopefully this rain holds off, otherwise it’ll be pretty dangerous out there I think,” said Israel-Premier Tech’s George Bennett before the race took off.
Even for those who were happy to see the mercury climb, it was unquestionably a brutally difficult 184km’s out on the road with ice stocking aplenty and the riders coming over the line to the run-out area desperately looking for shade and the quickest possible way to cool down.
For some it was iced drinks and dousing themselves with water from bottles but there were no half measures for last year’s winner and this year’s third-placed rider, Pithie, who spotted a large bucket of now largely melted ice that had been used to keep the drinks cool and tipped it over his head.
There were also many that didn’t make it over the line, with 24 riders not finishing the race, compared with just nine last year.
It could have been worse, as after the racing had finished on Sunday an almighty storm blew through, sending rivers of water flowing down the roads as the thunder and lightning rolled above.
When the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race was first run in 2015, two of the riders who were near the front of the pack were Simon Clarke and Amanda Spratt, both at the time racing for the Australian squads now known as Jayco-AlUla and Liv-AlUla-Jayco.
Some of those they raced alongside are now in the team cars, others are others still pinning a race number on but Spratt and Clarke were yet again stand-out riders in the event.
Spratt, who came fourth in 2015, won the race in 2016 and then added another three podium places since. This year she was 13th, but still in the thick of the action, trying to launch an attack in the final run to the line, though she was ultimately swamped on the run-in.
Clarke, who came second in 2015 and third in 2023, may not have been at the pointy end of the field, finishing 50th, but the effort he delivered to reel in riders during the final stages for teammate Corbin Strong was relentless.
Clarke was pulling at the front of the peloton far longer than could possibly be expected, particularly on such a hot day, with the effort clearly visible as he charged past the crowds on the Geelong waterfront with a look of determination and gritted teeth.
Neither rider could have been at the podium this 12 months, however as standard they may well be counted on to go away all of it available in the market within the try to get their arms on that particular wave trophy for his or her groups.
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Author : admin
Publish date : 2025-02-03 11:25:34
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