The women's Tour Down Under on Saturday and the men's Tour Down Under on Tuesday mark the traditional start of the World Tour season for professional cyclists in Australia.
16.01.2026, 09:55
SDA
The six-stage men's race around Adelaide with a prologue at the start is the first of 36 in the highest series in road cycling. The calendar remains unchanged compared to last year. As in 2025, the World Tour comprises 21 one-day and 15 stage races.
Revolutionary approach to the Tour de Suisse
The most striking change concerns the Tour de Suisse. While the men's tour will only have five stages in future, the women's tour will be extended by one stage. Both events will now be held in parallel, with identical routes and the start and finish in the same place. This concept is intended to make the event more compact, more audience-friendly and more financially viable.
Despite the structural adjustments, nothing will change in terms of its traditional place in the calendar. The Tour de Suisse will continue to finish around two weeks before the start of the men's Tour de France, the undisputed highlight of the season alongside the World Championships at the end of September, which will take place in the Canadian metropolis of Montreal this year.
In the Tour of France, the most important of the three Grand Tours over three weeks, everything is once again likely to come down to the duel between last year's winner Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard. In the big classics, Mathieu van der Poel will once again take on the role of world champion Pogacar's main rival. In the last three years, the Dutchman and the Slovenian have shared 13 of the 15 victories in the so-called monuments of cycling - including Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders - between them.
Focus on Rüegg and Schmid
None of the really big names are at the start of the season in Australia. Last year's winner Noemi Rüegg leads the women's field, with Petra Stiasny, a second Swiss rider, also registered. Time trial world champion Marlen Reusser and all-rounder Elise Chabbey, on the other hand, will be starting later in the season.
Joel Suter from the Swiss team Tudor and national champion Mauro Schmid from the local team Jayco AlUla will represent the Swiss colors in the men's race. Schmid, from Zurich, secured the only Swiss World Tour victory last year when he won the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race not far from Melbourne.
Only quintet with World Tour status left
Following Stefan Küng's move from Groupama-FDJ to the Swiss ProTeam Tudor Pro Cycling led by co-owner Fabian Cancellara, the Swiss squad with World Tour status now comprises just five riders - ten fewer than four years ago and nine fewer than in 2017, the year following the withdrawal of the Swiss team IAM Cycling.
Nevertheless, the ambitious Tudor team, which can compete structurally with the majority of the 18 World Tour teams, has a strong national base: nine Swiss riders are under contract, including two top international riders in Küng and Marc Hirschi.
