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The anticipation is already constructing to a brand new 12 months of Ladies’s WorldTour racing with the Santos Ladies’s Tour Down Underneath saying a deeper subject of prime tier groups in addition to a gaggle of headline riders for 2024 that features a trio of former winners.
The riders that will likely be on the beginning line of the January 12 to 14 race embrace defending champion Grace Brown (FDJ-Suez) and 2020 winner Ruth Edwards (nee Winder), with the rider from the US ending her two season retirement as she returns to the skilled peloton on the Australian race with Human Powered Well being. Then there may be additionally 2017 to 2019 winner Amanda Spratt (Lidl-Trek) who completes the group of former winners that present ample gas for a gripping closing showdown on Willunga Hill.
“It’s at all times thrilling to begin a brand new season on the Santos Tour Down Underneath and in 2024, there’s a bit of extra to stay up for with the addition of Willunga Hill to the ladies’s WorldTour race for the primary time,” Spratt mentioned. “I can’t deny that I’ve my eyes set on a very good efficiency there, it’s a giant objective of mine.
“General, I’ve nice reminiscences of this race having gained it 3 times and I’m desirous to attempt to replicate that success this time. I used to be shut final 12 months, agonisingly shut you could possibly say, so I’m actually motivated to come back again to race for the victory over again,” mentioned Spratt, who completed in second place total in 2023, simply ten seconds behind Brown.
Australian champion Brodie Chapman, Spratt’s teammate, may even be on the beginning record alongside South Australian native Tiffany Cromwell (Canyon-SRAM) together with Audrey Cordon-Ragot, Lily Williams and Megan Jastrab of Human Powered Well being.
The race – which was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and 2022 after which returned to the calendar with Ladies’s WorldTour standing in 2023 – additionally appears set to ship a deeper subject in 2024.
There have been six of the 15 Ladies’s WorldTeams on the race in 2023, with attendance not mandated for the ladies’s prime tier squads. Nevertheless, this time eight prime tier groups have already been confirmed together with Ladies’s Tour Down Underneath newcomers Canyon-SRAM, Jumbo-Visma, dsm-firmenich and UAE Group ADQ. They’ll face up in opposition to a returning FDJ-Suez and Lidl-Trek, in addition to Human Powered Well being and, after all, Australian group Liv-AlUla-Jayco.
“We’re thrilled to announce that so many UCI Ladies’s WorldTour groups have to date made the dedication to journey to Adelaide in January and compete on the Santos Tour Down Underneath,” race director Stuart O’Grady mentioned. “To have so many world-class riders is a testomony to our occasion and the continued progress and recognition of girls’s biking.”
The three-stage girls’s race will begin with a sprinters stage from Hahndorf to Campbelltown on Friday January 12, transferring right into a difficult weekend with a day for the all-rounders on Saturday and the Willunga finale for the climbers on Sunday January 14. The males’s WorldTour race then runs from Tuesday January 16 to Sunday January 21.
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