Like every year, it is Santos Tour Down Under which truly launches the start of the road season as well as the men’s WorldTour calendar. The 25th edition of the Aussie event began this Tuesday night (time difference required) with a first stage of 150.7 km between Prospect and Gumeracha. And at the end of a course without much difficulty, it was like last year and unsurprisingly a massive sprint which concluded this introduction, with the victory of the undisputed master of the exercise in Australia for a year , Sam Welsford ! Perfectly launched by the train of his team Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe despite a fall 2.6 kilometers from the line which disorganized the peloton in the final, thehe New Zealand sprinter, author of a hat-trick in 2024, resumed his Australian domination at the same pace by producing his effort at 200 meters without ever being seen again, thus extending his invincibility of the previous edition in mass finishes.
Video – The summary of Sam Welsford’s victory on the 1st stage
Three Britons in the top 5, Bryan Coquard misses the mark
But the Australian Critérium champion, who has already raised his arms for the third time at the start of the season after his success on the Villawood Men’s Classic Saturday, had to resist the return of Matthew Brennan (Visma | Lease a Bike), came back like a bullet in the last meters to take a beautiful and surprising 2nd place. The young 19-year-old Briton is accompanied by two compatriots in the top 5, the returning Matthew Walls (Groupama-FDJ) taking advantage of an excellent position in the wheel of the winner of the day to score his first podium in almost three years and his best performance to date with the French team. We also find Ben Swift (INEOS Grenadiers) in 5th position, behind the promising Tim Torn Teutenberg (Lidl-Trek). Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) did not manage to get involved in the final race and finished in 16th place.
In the general ranking, Sam Welsford logically takes the lead 4″ ahead of his runner-up of the day. Note that Bastien Tronchon (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) grabbed three seconds of bonuses by breaking away from the first hour in the company of the Australians Zac Marriage et Fergus Browningbefore getting up after the first intermediate sprint. In the second, behind the two attackers of the day, a big sprint took place between some of the general contenders for 3rd place and the last bonus at stake, and it was Jhonatan Narvaez (UAE Team Emirates XRG) who was the fastest, ahead of the French champion Paul Lapeira (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale).
