Santos Tour Down Under 2025 Stage 1

January 21, 2025 The cycling season returns once again with Stage 1 of the Santos Tour Down Under. While much of the Northern Hemisphere is blanketed in the cold and snow, Adelaide is a paradise of sunshine. The profile is lumpy with three categorized climbs including two ascents of Berry Hill, the last of which comes with just under 30KM from the finish. After a long neutral, Race Director Stuart O'Grady dropped the flag for the first day of racing in 2025. Zac Marriage and Fergus Browning of the Australian National Team were joined by Bastien Tronchon of Decathlon AG2R to form the break of the day. Filip Maciejuk of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe took control of the peloton with 135KM to go at a gap of 4 minute 25 seconds and did the majority of chasing through the day. Their maximum advantage got to just over 5 minutes as they hit the first Intermediate Sprint. Tronchon took the points and bonus seconds. He gave the Aussie duo a tap on the shoulder for good luck and dropped back to the bunch with 108KM to go. With 61KM to go, the gap had grown to 5 minutes. Cofidis and Bahrain-Victorious added a rider to the chase and by the second Intermediate Sprint at 48KM to go, the gap had been cut in half. Marriage and Browning were caught with 23KM to go, setting the stage for a likely sprint finish. A crash with 2.5KM to go left only around 40 riders in front. Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe led through 1KM to go but ran out of men with 250M from the line, forcing Sam Welsford to go long. Welsford took the field through to the line to pick up where he left off from last year's edition with a win. Matthew Brennan of Visma-Lease a Bike came with a head of speed to take second with Matthew Walls of Groupama-FDJ finishing in third.