The Tour Down Under announces a world-first: 'Most significant development in our history'

The Tour Down Under has a world first in store, the Australian stage race announced on Friday in an official press release. The WorldTour multi-day race will next year become the first in the world to run the men's and women's races on the same days and over the same course. Here's how the new set up will work.

So what will it look like in practice? "On corresponding race days, the women's peloton will roll out approximately 90 minutes after the men, following the same distance and route, and using the same start and finish locations," the organisers confirmed.

The organisation also explained what prompted the change. "This followed a request from the UCI, after feedback from women's teams, to reduce the total time the women's peloton needs to spend in Australia for two WorldTour races — the Santos Tour Down Under and the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race. This in turn led to a shorter race programme for the Tour Down Under."

In doing so, the Tour Down Under also becomes the first race to equalise the distances between the men's and women's events. "This follows an earlier step taken by the organisation in 2018, when it became the first cycling race in the world to offer equal prize money to men and women."

Race director Stuart O'Grady is understandably pleased. "The challenge from the UCI was to create a more compact race programme and to optimise the time the women's teams spend in Australia. We saw it as an opportunity to do something different — to bring the men's and women's races together and close out with a fantastic final weekend."

Whether or not other WorldTour stage races will follow suit remains to be seen. All eyes on January 2027, then.