Key Takeaways: Tour Down Under 2025

Breaking down how a handful of kilometers leading in to Willunga Hill decided the overall title at the season opener

With the dust settled on the Tour Down Under, first WorldTour race of the 2025 season, UAE Team Emirates-XRG has continued their scorching hot form from last year with new-signing Jhonatan Narváez taking the overall win, sealing victory with a textbook ride to win the Stage 5 summit finish atop Willunga Hill.

Behind him, Movistar’s Javier Romo, a 26-year-old latecomer to the sport who is quickly proving himself as a massive talent, and Finn Fisher-Black, the young Kiwi who came over to Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe from UAE in the off-season, rounded out the overall podium. And, outside the battle for the General Classification (GC), Sam Welsford powered his way to three sprint stage wins, giving Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe three early WorldTour wins and validating their concerted push to the sport’s superteam tier. Interestingly, in the two stages not won by UAE or Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, Movistar and Cofidis, the two least successful WorldTour teams in 2024 in terms of wins, prevailed.

Since watching early-season racing on the other side of the world at odds hours is not something most people dedicate their weekends to, I’ve pulled out and dissected the lead-in to Willunga Hill on Stage 5, which turned out to be the key moment of the week-long race, below:

Final Overall GC Top Five:
1) Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +0
2) Javier Romo (Movistar Team) +9
3) Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +12
4) Oscar Onley (Team Picnic PostNL) +15
5) Bastien Tronchon (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) +24

Tour Down Under

Stage 1 Top Three:
1) Sam Welsford (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +0
2) Matthew Brennan (Visma | Lease a Bike) +0
3) Matthew Walls (Groupama-FDJ) +0

Stage 2 Top Three:
1) Sam Welsford (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +0
2) Arne Marit (Intermarché-Wanty) +0
3) Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) +0

Stage 3 Top Three:
1) Javier Romo (Movistar Team) +0
2) Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +5
3) Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +5

Stage 4 Top Three:
1) Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) +0
2) Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain-Victorious) +0
3) Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +0

Stage 5
10km-to-go: On the run-in to the final climb of Willunga Hill, the most important 10kms of the week that is often marked by crosswinds and intense positioning battles, Jayco-AlUla’s GC leader, Luke Plapp, is sitting at the back of the peloton while Ineos lines up at the front, preparing to break up the race. Making matters worse, Plapp has two teammates, Mauro Schmid and Chris Harper, who are off the front instead of positioning Plapp.

7km: After taking a left-hand turn into a crosswind section, Ineos creates an echelon and immediately accelerates.

6.8km: The move means that anyone not in the first few positions heading into the left-hand turn is caught out and struggling behind.

5.9km: Ineos’ elite front group (which includes race leader Javier Romo) quickly catches the leading Jayco duo, while the peloton, including Plapp, is forced to chase hard behind. This is far from ideal as they approach an all-out 3km long climb.

2.8km: The chasing peloton reels in the Ineos-led front group right before the climb, and as soon as they hit the base, race leader Javier Romo attacks.

1.9km: With Romo dangling 13 seconds off the front, Plapp increases the pace in the hesitant peloton behind while Jhonatan Narváez smartly sticks closely to his wheel.

800m: Plapp’s impressively high pace eventually reels in Romo, who slots into the group, knowing that he needs to win the sprint or finish directly on Narváez’s wheel, to have a chance at holding his leader’s jersey.

400m: With Plapp still on the front, Narváez begins to set up his sprint by moving to the back of the group, parking himself on Romo’s rear wheel.

200m: After getting a brief reprieve on the flatter final 500 meters, Narváez explodes out of the wheels when he opens up his sprint. Last year’s 4th place overall finisher Oscar Onley is the only one able to respond.

Finish: Narváez rips through the finish line to grab a 10-second time bonus with Onley and Finn Fisher-Black behind him. Three seconds later, Plapp and Romo come over the line, which puts Narváez in the leader’s jersey by nine seconds on Romo and in position to win the overall title.

Stage 5 Three:
1) Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +0
2) Javier Romo (Movistar Team) +0
3) Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +0

Stage 6 Top Three
1) Sam Welsford (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) +0
2) Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) +0
3) Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain-Victorious) +0

Key Takeaways

1) Jhonatan narváez’s win validates his off-Season move to UAE: The 2024 overall runner-up clearly returned to Australia on a mission and executed with perfect tactics and a large dose of patience on Willunga, where he was more than happy to follow in the wheels of more eager GC contenders before leveraging his ability to rack up stage win time bonuses to win the overall.

• Narváez’s consistently finishing in the top three was crucial to winning this race. He racked up three podiums throughout six stages, netting him a total of 21 bonus seconds.

  • Meanwhile, behind him, Javier Romo only racked up 11 bonus seconds and finished nine seconds behind in the GC, meaning that he lost the GC to Narváez despite actually completing the course in less time.

• This overall win, where he appeared slightly sharper and better supported than in 2024, highlights why Narváez likely wanted to make the leap to UAE from Ineos over the off-season.

  • Through the six-stage race, Narváez’s UAE teammates Jay Vine and Pablo Torres provided ample positioning support, and the team leaves the season’s first WorldTour race exactly where they left off in 2024, leading both UCI points and win totals.

2) Javier Romo may have lost the GC, but he confirms Movistar has a star in the making on their hands: While he wasn’t a massive pre-race favorite, the relatively unknown 26-year-old Javier Romo flashed a massive engine and solid racecraft when he soloed clear to win Stage 3 and take the overall lead, before ultimately holding on for second place overall.

• While his attack at the base of Willunga may have been incredibly ill-advised, it was a brave piece of riding and showed that he knew he needed to put real time between him and Narváez to win the overall, since even if he had stuck to the Ecuadorian’s wheel to finish in second place and land tied on time, he would have lost the overall due to having inferior stage-by-stage finishing positions.

  • So, in effect, his only chance of winning the overall was to ride the climb as fast as possible and hope Narváez was either caught out following wheels in the hesitant group behind or ‘burned’ off due to the fast pace.

    • With this in mind, what looked like a doomed and ill-advised attack was actually a cerebral piece of racing that illustrated Romo's very clear understanding of the race situation.

• Even though they didn’t leave with the overall win, Movistar will likely be more than happy that they leave Australia with an overall podium, as many WorldTour wins as they had in all of 2024, and confirmation that they have found a diamond in the rough with Romo.

3) Luke Plapp’s continuing positioning issues see Jayco-AlUla leave the TDU empty-handed yet again: They may have raced aggressively all week long at their home race (where they are under immense pressure for results), but Jayco-AlUla failed to win a stage or finish on the overall podium for the second straight year. A major component of this is their GC leader, Luke Plapp, continuing to be caught out at key moments in races after being extremely poorly positioned (often sitting last wheel).

• For example, even though everyone knew positioning on the run-in to Willunga is extremely important and that the course was turning into a crosswind, Plapp was lackadaisically sitting last wheel in the peloton while his GC rivals and the entire Ineos team were massive at the front.

  • Because of this positioning, Plapp had to expend a massive amount of energy to get to the front of the race by the time the climb began. The extra energy likely killed any chance he had of riding clear of the rest and/or finishing in the top three on the stage, which he needed to do to finish on the overall podium.

• Given that his Jayco-AlUla team knows about Plapp’s positioning limitations, it is somewhat strange that they opted for such an aggressive tactic on the stage: sending Schmid and Harper up the road instead of having them sit back and shepherd Plapp throughout the bunch.

4) Ineos continues to be the sport’s best team without a true race-winning star: Like a football team that excels at everything except putting the ball in the goal, Ineos executed incredibly well all week but left the race with no stage wins or significant GC results.

• Their sprint leadout on Stage 4 was the best of the race (they would go on to finish 5th on the stage with Sam Watson), and their ability to blow the race up and catch riders like Plapp out on the run-in to Willunga Hill was legitimately impressive.

  • Unfortunately, these actions only earned them 8th on Stage 4 and 7th place overall with Magnus Sheffield.

• This highlights an acute issue Ineos is facing at the moment and shows how the addition of just a few riders who can finish things off, like Caleb Ewan, could change the narrative around the team.

  • Ironically, they looked like they could have used a rider exactly like Jhonatan Narváez, who left the team over the off-season.

5) RedBull-Bora-hansgrohe confirms their place amongst the WorldTour’s top-tier: After finishing 5th in UCI points and 11th in total team wins in 2024, their first campaign after being purchased by the Austrian sports giant RedBull, the German team came out swinging at the Tour Down Under, racking up three early WorldTour wins and flexing their transfer season bounty.

• For example, while incumbent sprinter Sam Welsford and leadout man Danny van Poppel cleaned up, their new arrivals, Laurence Pithie (from Groupama-FDJ) and Finn Fisher-Black (from UAE), greatly impressed, with Fisher-Black looking like he welcomed his newfound freedom to race for himself.

  • Leaving the race with three stage wins and an overall podium due to new-arrival Fisher-Black, confirms the newest arrival to the sport’s superteam tier had a great off-season, both in terms of preparation and transfer market performance.

What/Where/How to Watch Races For the Rest of the Week:

Mallorca Trofeo series (Challenge Mallorca)
How to Watch: Max (USA)
When to Watch: January 29th-February 2nd, Stages 1-5: 9am-11am EST ( estimate)

AlUla Tour:
How to Watch: FloBikes (USA)
When to Watch: January 28th-February 2nd, Stages 1-6 6:30am-9:00am EST (estimate), Stages 1-6

GP La Marseillaise:
How to Watch: Max (USA)
When to Watch: 10:00am-12:00pm EST (estimate), Sunday, February 2nd