General classification Tour Down Under 2026 stage 1 - Lund Andresen new race leader whilst Narvaez gains time on the competition

Stage 1 of the Tour Down Under was a flat day, but in a race where the gaps are as small as here, and in its opening days, each stage can change things quite a bit. Today we have a new race leader in Tobias Lund Andresen after the Danish rider took the victory in the final sprint, whilst a few riders used the intermediate sprints to move up the overall classification.

Lund Andresen took the stage win and, with this, 10 bonus seconds which he added to his tally. After a strong prologue, this has allowed the Decathlon CMA CGM Team rider to jump into the race lead, taking the ochre jersey that was on the shoulders of Sam Watson today in Tanunda. Whilst Ethan Vernon was very close to the lead, as he missed the podium, he was unable to go through the previous leader.

In the first intermediate sprint of the stage Jhonatan Narváez crossed the line first and gained 3 seconds, gaining what can be meaningful time on the competiton - he won the GC by 9 seconds last year - for a low cost of energy. He is now only 2 seconds away from teammate Jay Vine who is the best placed GC rider. From the day's breakaway, Guillaume Martin also set off in pursuit of time and collected 6 seconds. He lost significant time previously in the prologue but has made up some of it, and is now 18 seconds behind Jay Vine; and 23 behind Lund Andresen.

With this being the first stage to award points, Andresen is the leader of the points classification, but it will be Visma's Matthew Brennan to wear it on stage 2 (unless he opts to wear the youth jersey, in that case it will be Sam Weslford); the KOM jersey will be worn by Martin Urianstad who countered the Groupama-FDJ duo to collect the most KOM points from the breakaway today; Matthew Brennan continues to lead the youth classification.