The 2023 Men’s Tour Down Under was a road cycling stage race that took place between 17 and 22 January 2023 in and around Adelaide, South Australia.
It was the 23rd edition of the Tour Down Under and the first race of the 2023 UCI World Tour.
The race was won by the Australian pro Jay Vine of the UAE-Team Emirates, after taking the lead on the third stage of the race and holding the race leader’s ochre jersey to the finish.
Vines’ winning margin over runner-up Simon Yates of the Team Jayco-AlUla was eleven seconds, and Team Bahrain Victorious’ Pello Bilbao completed the podium, sixteen seconds behind Yates and afull twenty-seven seconds in arrears of Vine.
Unlike Vine, neither Yates nor Bilbao won stages of the race. The other stages winners were Alberto Bettiol who won the Prologue and Stage 1; and the great Rohan Dennis who won Stage 2.
Magnus Sheffield from Ineos Grenadiers was the winner of the young rider classification, finishing fourth overall, while the team’s classification was won by UAE Team Emirates
As the Tour Down Under is a UCI World Tour event, all 18 UCI ProTeams were invited automatically and obligated to send a squad.
UCI Pro Team Israel Premier Tech received a wildcard invitation and together with a selection of Australian riders forming the UniSA-Australia squad, this formed the event’s 20-team peloton.
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Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race 2023:
The second of the first couple of the season’s races held in Australia is the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Race, which is also known as Great Ocean Road Race or the Cadel Road Race.
This is an annual professional one-day road bicycle racing for both men and women starting and finishing in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, and routed along the picturesque Great Ocean Road.
The first race was held in 2015, as the farewell race for Cadel Evans – Australia’s only Tour de France winner and Road World Champion.
The 2017 edition was added to the UCI World Tour for the first time.
In November 2020, it was announced that the 2021 race would not be held due to the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic.
This was due in part to a number of UCI WorldTour teams making the decision to stay in Europe, due to uncertainty around international travel conditions and the logistics of quarantine requirements.
The event returned in 2023 was held on 28-29 January.
The men’s version is 176 km (109 mi), while the women’s is 143 km (89 mi).
In 2023, the mass participation People’s Ride includes three distance options—35km, 50km, or 125km.
The race starts on the Geelong waterfront in Victoria, and travels westward to the rolling hills of Moriac, turning south toward the famous surf beach of Bells Beach, following the surf coast to Torquay and through Cadel’s hometown of Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove, before heading north back to a Geelong circuit before finishing back around on the waterfront.
First across the finish line was Marius Mayrhofer (Team DSM) in a time of 4hrs 15min 11secs, with Hugo Page (Intermarche-Circus-Wanty) second; and completing the podium places Simon Clarke (Israel Premier Tech).
A couple of good races which promises to be a great season of cycling after the interference of the last few years.