Inside the peloton: Tour Down Under report

It has been almost five years since my last visit of Australia. At the time I spent three weeks in Melbourne for the World Championships, and I was pleasantly surprised by the multicultural characteristic of the city and its passion for sport.

This year I really wanted to come back to Australia, to see different parts of it and finally do the only World Tour race I have never done before - Tour Down Under.

I had heard all kinds of stories about it. How relaxed the race used to be before it turned World Tour (apparently Adelaide was the place to learn to party), the shock to the system Australian Summer will give us all coming from European hibernation, the wild life, kangaroos and Koala bears all around the city outskirts.

Well, I haven’t seen any of this (or maybe I just didn’t look hard enough…)

We have arrived well ahead of the race, having the luxury of taking a couple of days easy to get over the jetlag. We spent the days mostly doing our homework of scouting the stage finishes we were going to encounter later in the race or ride along the coast and envy all the holidaymakers.

The weather has been absolutely perfect for bike riding. Some kind of "cold wave" must have hit South Australia for the last two weeks, because the temperature barely went over 30 degrees Celsius. Perfect for us, but I hope it won’t make to much damage to the Shiraz growing in the Vale only two months from harvest.

The actual racing has been as hard as any other top level events on the calendar. The stages were not extremely long, but often when the stage length is decreasing the intensity goes up proportionally. All teams were on a very clear mission here, everyone wanted to open the season with the best legs and grab as many points as possible before the European part of the season kicks off.

The only significant difference I see from any other big race is the week when the Tour Down Under is on, the entire city of Adelaide belongs to cyclists. The race starts and finishes with a circuit race in the heart of the city. At the centre of the city you have equally a decent size bike expo occupying the centre.

Before the start of each and even more so after the finish I could see a constant flow of cyclists moving and sharing the road with most of us riders coming back to the hotel on bikes.

I have had a fantastic time during Tour Down Under. It was a great race to ride, and to experience the warmth of the Australian spectators and I think that is what really sets this race apart from the others.

Martin