2025 Women's Tour Down Under Report

 Happy Monday, cycling fans!


As the 2025 UCI WorldTour and UCI Women’s WorldTour seasons get UNDER way (see what I did there?!) I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy New Year, which sounds odd on the 20th January, but there we go.


The Women’s WorldTour season got underway over the weekend with the Santos Tour Down Under Women - a race made up of three stages in and around Adelaide, South Australia.


The first stage was mostly just a warm-up for the riders after their winter break, with many taking it easy, but Australian Alyssa Polites clearly wanted to make a mark on home roads and as such took the Mountain Classification jersey after stage one.


The first stage itself was won by Daniek Hengeveld in her first WorldTour win, which was also the first win of the season for Ceratizit Pro Cycling Team. Her teammate, Canada’s Sarah Van Dam, finished fourth on the day, with eventual TDU winner Noemi Rüegg finishing sixth. Hengeveld also took the first Points Classification jersey, with the aforementioned Australian Alyssa Polites - riding for Australia - getting the first Youth Classification jersey alongside her Mountain Classification.


The second stage was where the real racing began and after 3 hours and 10 minutes in the saddle, Noemi Rüegg of Switzerland and EF Education-Oatly won the stage ahead of Silke Smulders and Mie Bjørndal Ottestad. Ally Wollaston launched an attack with 46km to go, and a little while later Niamh Fisher-Black was involved in a crash, but this didn’t seem to faze her as she got up and carried on, and when Chloé Dygert launched an attack from the back of the group with around 4.7km to go, Fisher-Black caught her with about 2.8km to go.


Stage three was the final stage of the Tour Down Under and it wasn’t a quiet one either. Kristyna Burlova of Ceratizit Pro Cycling Team launched an attack with 71km to go and she was joined by Simone Boilard and Kathrin Schweinberger. Niamh Fisher-Black tried attacking frequently throughout the stage, but was consistently caught. Tiffany Cromwell also regularly tried attacking on home roads, but was also caught. Ella Wyllie looked good when launching an attack towards the end, but she too was caught in the end so nothing came of it. Chloé Dygert went on to win the stage and Noemi Rüegg took the General Classification. Silke Smulders of the Netherlands and Liv AlUla Jayco finished second overall, with Mie Bjørndal Ottestad of Norway and Uno-X Mobility making up the podium.


As always, thank you for reading and I’ll be back next Monday with the report from the Men’s Tour Down Under, which starts in the early hours of tonight in UK time (and no, I don’t watch it live due to the timing)! See you then, cycling fans!

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