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For many years now, the women’s racing at the Tour Down Under has had the look and feel of Women’s WorldTour event – top teams, high-level organisation, live coverage and prize money that matched the men’s event. This year as it returns to the UCI calendar after two years of absence, it has finally got the classification to reflect that reality.
The women’s Santos Tour Down Under, with the Schwalbe Classic as the curtain raiser on Saturday, January 14, will deliver Australia’s first-ever Women’s WorldTour stage race from Monday, January 15 to Tuesday, January 17 and its lifted status – and points on offer – to help provide a continued incentive for top tier teams to make the trip to Australia in January amid what is becoming an increasingly loaded calendar of women’s racing.
It has been a 12-year build toward the top tier for women’s racing at the Tour Down Under, which started in 2011 with a series of women’s street criterium races won by Chloe Hosking. The next year it grew to three races, and then in 2015, the annual women’s race became part of the National Road Series before securing 2.2 status in 2016 and 2.1 status in 2018, and that was also the year that the women were offered prize money that equalled the men’s.
From then, the move up to Women’s WorldTour status under the guardianship of long-term race director Kimberley Conte only seemed a matter of not if but when. In 2020 it reached 2.Pro level but for 2021 and 2022 COVID-19 intervened, and with borders shut, the international racing was cancelled but determined to keep the momentum rolling, the organisers kept the racing going, delivering a National Road Series race with the trappings of a top-level international race.
Now with the borders re-opened, the first Women’s WorldTour Santos Tour Down Under has nearly arrived. Conte has moved onto other challenges, so it will be under the stewardship of the team of Stuart O’Grady, Annette Edmondson and Carlee Taylor that the race, which takes riders from the coast to the climbs, plays out.
Three-time winner Amanda Spratt will return, but instead of heading into the challenge with Australia’s only WorldTour team to back her, she will instead be lining up with the might of Trek-Segafredo behind her, a formidable team that has already proven its strength on Australian soil even when outnumbered after Brodie Chapman swept up the Australian road title.
Add in Grace Brown at the head of FDJ-SUEZ with the…
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