The Women’s Tour Down Under – which was cancelled in 2021 and 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic – will, for the first time, open the 2023 Women’s WorldTour in Australia,
In what has been a 12-year build toward the top tier for women’s racing, the three-day race will be held from January 15-17, where the overall winner will also take home the series’ first leader’s jersey of the professional racing season.
The event will host six Women’s WorldTeams, along with four Continental teams, a domestic squad and two national teams from Australia and New Zealand, for a total of 78 riders. Cyclingnews highlights just some of the riders to watch.
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It’s been an exciting start to the year for Amanda Spratt as she began her racing season on home soil under the brand new colours of Trek-Segafredo and secured podium finishes at the Bay Crits and in the road race at the Australian National Championships.
She enters the Women’s Tour Down Under with a target on her back as a three-time winner, having won the marquee home stage race in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Now in its first edition on the Women’s WorldTour, and with a fresh outlook on her career, Spratt will aim to win a record fourth overall title.
The route is well-suited to her strengths as a punchy rider, especially for stage 2 into Uraidla, and her strengths in the longer climbs will be an asset for the hilly queen stage 3 finale, which includes Corkscrew Road into Campbelltown.
Grace Brown will lead FDJ -Suez off the back of a consistently strong 2022 season. Her strengths are in the time trials, with a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games and a silver medal at the World Championships, and she recently won her third time trial national title in Mount Helen.
While there is no time trial at the Women’s Tour Down Under, her strength in this discipline shows her capacity to attack and hold off the peloton. She’s a savvy, versatile rider, and last year, she was seventh at the Tour of Flanders, second at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, took a stage win and second overall at the Women’s Tour, and won a stage at the Challenge by la Vuelta.
Short and hilly stage races are, generally, her forte, and given her recent run of success in the time trial at…
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