Tour Down Under Recap

The Santos Tour Down Under marks the beginning of the cycling season, and takes place in South Australia around the city of Adelaide. As someone whose knowledge of Australia is pretty limited to what I’ve learned from a combination of Discovery Channel nature documentaries (by which I mean Crocodile Hunter) and ITV nature documentaries (by which I mean Love Island UK), I was excited to learn a bit more about the sixth-largest country in the world! 

Read on for quick highlights from the men and women’s tour as well as a tasty lamb-based meal to celebrate Australian cuisine.

Women’s Tour Down Under

The women’s tour was a three-day stage race featuring several hilly parcours. The Tour Down Under is a race that favors sprinters and puncheurs with not many long climbs, rather several stages, across both the men and women’s editions, that featured rolling terrain. Ally Wollaston, a sprinter from New Zealand on team FDJ-Suez dominated the sprints, winning both the first and second stages of the tour.

The third stage was the GC stage, featuring a double ascent of the Corkscrew – a short but steep climb 2.5 km long with an average gradient of 8.5 percent. Going over the top of the corkscrew the second time was Noemi Rüegg of EF-Education Oatly with three riders from UAE Team ADQ. UAE seemingly unsure which of their three rides was supposed to sprint for the finish looked at each other while Rüegg sprinted past them for the win, giving EF Oatly their first win of the season.

Men’s Tour Down Under

The men’s tour was a five-day stage race covering much of the same terrain. The men’s tour began with a short “prologue,” a 3.6 km individual time trial, which was won by Sam Wastson on Ineos Grenadiers .

The first proper stage was for the sprinters, and Tobias Lund Andreseen on Decathlon CMA CGM (terrible team name with the double acronym) won the stage against some of the other sprint favorites. Stage 2 was the GC stage featuring another double take on the Corkscrew. This time, UAE Team Emirates scored the first and second place wins with Australian rider Jay Vine and Jhonatan Narvaez,respectively. Stage 3 was another sprint finish, this time with Sam Welsford on Ineos Grenadiers winning the sprint.

For stage 4, high winds and temperatures led to a change of the parcours due to the risk of wildfires. As a result, what was originally intended to be a challenging climbing stage was another sprint finish. Ethan Vernon on the newly-formed NSN Cycling team (formerly Israel Premiertech) won the stage, giving the new team their first win of the season.

Finally, stage 5 was yet another sprint stage. All Jay Vine had to do was safely cross the finish line to get the GC win. He did manage to do that, but not before crashing after a kangaroo jumped into the peloton. Fortunately he wasn’t seriously injured and secured his GC victory. As for the stage, Matthew Brennan won the sprint, getting Visma Lease-a-Bike their first win of the season.

The Dish

South Australian food is known for its seafood, wine, and meat dishes. One of Its most famous dishes is something called a “pie floater,” which is a meat pie served in the middle of a pea soup. This did not appeal to me. So I created another dish that is popular in Australia, though not of Australian origin: gyros.

I took a few liberties in making these, but I did use Australian ground lamb to make them. I used Jenn Segal’s recipe because she never leads me astray. However, instead of pita bread I used naan, because I prefer it flavor-wise. While topped with the traditional tzatziki (store-bought) we added sliced olives and fried halloumi bites on top, because I forgot to get feta and other toppings. But really, if you want to make this at home, top it with whatever you like: peppers, red onions, etc.

The recipe made enough for leftovers, and this is a dish that reheats super well when you follow the recipe I used.

I accompanied the gyros with a lovely glass of shiraz from McLaren Vale, a wine-producing region in Adelaide. Per the description from my local wine shop: “Plush and jammy with layers and layers of blueberry and blackberry mixed with luscious mocha, coffee and vanilla.”

All in all the Tour Down Under was an exciting (and delicious) start to the season! Stay tuned for the UAE tour coming up in a few weeks!