The anticipation is already constructing to a brand new 12 months of Girls’s WorldTour racing with the Santos Girls’s Tour Down Beneath asserting a deeper area of prime tier groups in addition to a bunch of headline riders for 2024 that features a trio of former winners.
The riders that shall be on the beginning line of the January 12 to 14 race embody defending champion Grace Brown (FDJ-Suez) and 2020 winner Ruth Edwards (nee Winder), with the rider from the USA ending her two season retirement as she returns to the skilled peloton on the Australian race with Human Powered Well being. Then there’s additionally 2017 to 2019 winner Amanda Spratt (Lidl-Trek) who completes the group of former winners that present ample gas for a gripping ultimate showdown on Willunga Hill.
“It’s at all times thrilling to start out a brand new season on the Santos Tour Down Beneath and in 2024, there’s just a little extra to sit up for with the addition of Willunga Hill to the ladies’s WorldTour race for the primary time,” Spratt mentioned. “I can’t deny that I’ve my eyes set on efficiency there, it’s an enormous objective of mine.
“General, I’ve nice reminiscences of this race having gained it thrice and I’m desirous to attempt to replicate that success this time. I used to be shut final 12 months, agonisingly shut you may say, so I’m actually motivated to return again to race for the victory once more,” mentioned Spratt, who completed in second place total in 2023, simply ten seconds behind Brown.
Australian champion Brodie Chapman, Spratt’s teammate, will even be on the beginning listing alongside South Australian native Tiffany Cromwell (Canyon-SRAM) together with Audrey Cordon-Ragot, Lily Williams and Megan Jastrab of Human Powered Well being.
The race – which was cancelled as a result of COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and 2022 after which returned to the calendar with Girls’s WorldTour standing in 2023 – additionally appears to be like set to ship a deeper area in 2024.
There have been six of the 15 Girls’s WorldTeams on the race in 2023, with attendance not mandated for the ladies’s prime tier squads. Nevertheless, this time eight prime tier groups have already been confirmed together with Girls’s Tour Down Beneath newcomers Canyon-SRAM, Jumbo-Visma, dsm-firmenich and UAE Group ADQ. They are going to face up towards a returning FDJ-Suez and Lidl-Trek, in addition to Human Powered Well being and, in fact, Australian workforce Liv-AlUla-Jayco.
“We’re thrilled to announce that so many UCI Girls’s WorldTour groups have to this point made the dedication to journey to Adelaide in January and compete on the Santos Tour Down Beneath,” race director Stuart O’Grady mentioned. “To have so many world-class riders is a testomony to our occasion and the continued development and recognition of girls’s biking.”
The three-stage ladies’s race will begin with a sprinters stage from Hahndorf to Campbelltown on Friday January 12, shifting right into a difficult weekend with a day for the all-rounders on Saturday and the Willunga finale for the climbers on Sunday January 14. The males’s WorldTour race then runs from Tuesday January 16 to Sunday January 21.