2025 season review | Team Jayco AlUla: Did the Australian team fulfill its expectations with O'Connor, Matthews and more?

In today’s 2025 cycling season review, we will analyse the campaign of Team Jayco AlUla. The 2025 season was a rollercoaster for Team Jayco AlUla, Australia’s flagship WorldTour squad. They mixed a handful of big wins with long stretches where they struggled to influence races. This review looks at how they performed from the spring classics through the Grand Tours, and how that measured against expectations. With Simon Yates departed to Team Visma | Lease a Bike, the focus shifted to a new leadership group and the question of whether they could keep the team at the top level.

Jayco AlUla, still carrying the GreenEDGE identity, has long been the showpiece of Australian road cycling. Simon Yates supplied their greatest GC results, including the 2018 Vuelta a España and fourth at the 2023 Tour de France, but left before 2025 for Visma. The team reshuffled around veteran puncheur Michael Matthews, Dutch sprinter Dylan Groenewegen, rising all-rounder Luke Plapp, Irish climber Eddie Dunbar and new GC spearhead Ben O’Connor.

On paper, that goal was not met. Jayco AlUla slipped to 16th in the UCI WorldTour rankings, down from 14th in 2024. For a roster strengthened around O’Connor and supported by established names, general manager Brent Copeland admitted they “should be at least in the top 10... not back in 16th place”. The team still banked three Grand Tour stage wins and a few one-day victories, but the collective return was below the level they had aimed for.

The classics campaign captured the pattern of the whole season: a couple of high points, but no knockout blows. At home, things started well with Mauro Schmid’s victory at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, where he jumped clear late in Geelong and held off the favourites for an early WorldTour win.

Milano - Sanremo brought them closest to Monument success. Michael Matthews rode superbly, staying with the front group over the Poggio and then winning the sprint for fourth from the chasers. Once again, though, he watched a rival, this time Mathieu van der Poel, finish the job ahead. On the cobblestones of Flanders and Roubaix, the limits of the roster were clear. Without a pure cobbled leader, Jayco AlUla struggled to shape the racing and were largely absent from the main action.

The Ardennes one-days offered more promise. Schmid proved himself on steep, punchy terrain by taking tenth at La Flèche Wallonne and fifteenth at Amstel Gold Race. Those rides did not place him in the fight for victory, but showed that Jayco had a reliable option for hilly classics.

The best European one-day moment came on May 1st, when Matthews sprinted to victory at Eschborn–Frankfurt. In summary, the spring brought two good WorldTour wins and regular presence, but no Monument podiums and a clear gap to the strongest classics teams.

Team Jayco AlUla lined up at the Giro without a clear GC favourite and targeted stage wins with Chris Harper and Luke Plapp. Their approach paid off quickly. On Stage 8, Plapp attacked out of the breakaway on the hilly road to Castelraimondo and held on to claim his first Grand Tour stage victory, an important breakthrough for both rider and team.

Harper initially hoped for a top ten overall, but illness in the second week ended that plan. He reset his goals and went all in for the queen stage. On Stage 20, over the Colle delle Finestre and up to Sestrière, he joined the early move and launched a long-range attack on the gravel climb. He reached the finish alone after what was widely described as “the ride of his life”. Harper finished only 23rd on GC, yet his win, combined with Plapp’s earlier success and several minor placings from Zana, allowed Jayco AlUla to leave Italy with two stages and enough to call it a “successful Giro”.

The Tour demanded a different plan. Ben O’Connor arrived as clear leader, aiming for a strong overall and a headline mountain stage win, while Groenewegen fronted the sprint train and Eddie Dunbar added depth for the climbs. Given O’Connor was second at the Vuelta the year before, hopes were pretty high for a strong result.

The first week was difficult. Groenewegen struggled with positioning and crashes, never managing to contest the final metres as he wanted. After one messy finish into Valence he admitted “it just isn’t happening… it couldn’t be any worse”, summarising his Tour in a single sentence. Soon after, Dunbar crashed out on Stage 7 while in decent form, ending his chance to rescue his season and weakening O’Connor’s support.

O’Connor gradually turned the race in his favour. On the Alpine queen stage to the brutal Col de la Loze and Courchevel he took advantage of hesitation among the main contenders, joining a strong break. On the final climb he paced his effort better than his companions, dropped them and rode alone to the finish at altitude. The victory instantly became one of Jayco AlUla’s season highlights.

In the overall standings he hovered around the lower half of the top ten before slipping to eleventh by Paris, having spent energy chasing that stage. Still, a prestigious mountain win and a near–top ten on GC made for a respectable Tour. The sprint project, by contrast, failed altogether. Groenewegen left without a victory and later described his race as “not a single top-ten”, acknowledging that his chances against the year’s dominant sprinters were slim.

The Vuelta was the quietest of the three Grand Tours. On paper, Dunbar’s double win in the 2024 edition made him an obvious leader, but his troubled season continued. In reality, he never threatened the GC battle and slid down the standings. He later called 2025 “a frustrating season”, and his Vuelta summed that up. The team left Spain without a win.

The uneven season has prompted a sizeable overhaul. Groenewegen departs after three years to join the new Unibet Tietema Rockets project, taking his sprint pedigree elsewhere. Dunbar moves to Q36.5 Pro Cycling, seeking a reset. Chris Harper also heads to Q36.5, stripping away much of Jayco’s climbing backbone.

New arrivals are geared toward reinforcing sprint and classics depth while adding long-term GC projects. German sprinter Pascal Ackermann joins on a two-year deal as main fast man, bringing Grand Tour stage wins and a strong record in bunch finishes. Dries De Bondt and Andrea Vendrame arrive to bolster the one-day squad and lead-out, and Alessandro Covi comes from UAE Team Emirates as an important signing for hillier races and is expected to help Matthews in events like Milano-Sanremo and Amstel.

Seen as a whole, Team Jayco AlUla’s 2025 campaign deserves a 6/10. They produced memorable days, Plapp and Harper winning in the Giro, O’Connor conquering Col de la Loze, Matthews taking Eschborn–Frankfurt, but those peaks were separated by long spells of underperformance.

The slide to 16th in the WorldTour rankings and the reduced points total underline how often they came up short in everyday races. When leaders like Groenewegen and Dunbar crashed, misfired or lacked form, there were not always others ready to step in as regular winners. The team often raced from the position of outsiders, relying on breakaways rather than control.

There is enough quality around O’Connor, Matthews and the new recruits to suggest improvement, but 2025 will be remembered more for isolated successes than for sustained excellence.

I can’t shake the feeling that it should have been better in 2025 for Team Jayco AlUla. The highs were genuinely brilliant, and Ben O’Connor winning on Col de la Loze reminded me why I have a soft spot for this team. But the consistency just wasn’t there. Too many leaders misfired, the sprints went nowhere, and slipping in the rankings said it all. Still, when this team gets it right, they deliver real fireworks. I just wanted more of them.

Not much to say on Jayco, a team that has not been able to keep up with the big moves of the massive-budget outfits at the top of the World Tour. Not their fault or responsibility, but there's only so much that could be done. I'm hesitant in criticizing the team because I'm aware that there is only half the money as in a team such as UAE or INEOS (although the latter doesn't look like it), but it's a year without much to show for.

In Australia they always ride well, and of course, they had victories to show for and start their year off in the right foot. Michael Matthews had a decent year, continuing to be consistent, but of course a victory in Frankfurt isn't enough to make it a great year, even if he remains very motivated and strong. Luke Plapp and Chris Harper both won at the Giro, saving the team's race, but the headlines were never on them. Dylan Groenewegen's sprinting mission didn't work out even with a great leadout, and so his departure from the team isn't a big surprise.

Ben O'Connor had a brilliant day at the Tour de France, winning the queen stage to Col de la Loze with a classic performance. It did save his Tour, but not his season. After a tremendous 2024 in which he battled against the very best in the world, he was always trying to find his level in 2025 without success.

Paul Double's GC wins at Slovakia and Guangxi were a positive surprise and evidence of a good signing that other teams missed out on, sure they are not top level wins but winning a World Tour stage-race is not for many and the Briton really did improve his level in the way expected after the move to the World Tour. An average year, but it's not expected that much will improve next year yet as the team lost a few quality riders and the transfers are a bit all over the place.