ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s Jay Vine was knocked down by a kangaroo on the final stage Sunday but recovered to win the Tour Down Under cycle race, the first event of the 2026 World Tour.
Vine was knocked from his bike when two large kangaroos bounced onto the road on a high speed section with about 96 kilometers (61 miles) left in the undulating 169.8 kilometer (105 mile) stage through the hills around Adelaide. Three riders — Menno Huising, Lucas Stevenson and Alberto Dainese — were forced to quit the race and the kangaroo also was injured.
Vine led the race by 1 minute, 3 seconds on general classification entering the last stage. But he was already at a disadvantage because two of his UAE Team Emirates including the defending champion and then second-placed Jhonatan Narvaez crashed out in the fourth stage on Saturday.
Juan Sebastian Molano also abandoned the tour Sunday because of fatigue, leaving Vine with only two teammates on the last stage: Ivo Emanuel Oliveira and Briton Adam Yates.
Vine got up immediately after his crash and changed bikes twice before rejoining the peloton with around 92 kilometers remaining.
He remained near the front of the peloton for the rest of the stage and finished 1 minute, 3 seconds ahead of Mauro Schmid of Switzerland (Team Jayco Alula) and Harry Sweeny (EF Education – Easypost) of Australia who was a further nine seconds behind.
‘Dangerous’ intruders
“Everyone asks me what’s the most dangerous thing in Australia and I always tell them it’s kangaroos,” said Vine who won his home race for the second time in three years. “They wait and they hide in the bushes until you can’t stop and they jump out in front of you. Point proven today.
“Two of them blasted through the peloton when we were doing probably 50 kph (30 mph) and one of them stopped and went left, right, left right, left right and I ended up hitting its backside.”
Matthew Brennan of Britain (Team Visma) won the stage in a sprint ahead of Finn Fisher-Black of New Zealand (Bora Hansgrohe) and Tobias Lund Andresen of Denmark (Decathlon).
The stage covered eight laps of a circuit which involved a slow, steep climb to the finish in the township of Stirling. There were two breakaways during the stage, the second of which came back to the peloton with only one kilometer remaining.
Vine managed to overcome an enormous amount of bad luck to win the race.
“This year we started off really positive and we just had more and more bad luck as the race went on,” he said. “Today was never going to easy and I’ve been saying all week it’s not over until it’s over.
“But it’s proven to be not over till it’s over in this race for us.”
___
AP cycling: https://apnews.com/hub/cycling
