Vine started his time with
UAE Team Emirates and the World Tour brilliantly, winning the time-trial national championships and then the Tour Down Under. It seemed to be the start of something huge but his 2023 climaxed there. Over the season he suffered from inconsistencies, some of them related to crashed he suffered. Vine suffered a knee injury that took him out of the UAE Tour and then he didn't race until the Giro - where he only looked at his best during stage 16 where he supported João Almeida to a stage win.
“I was still frustrated after the Giro, just wanting to put a good race together," he tells, having suffered a crash early on which derailed any GC chances he had. The Australian then went on to crash out of the Tour de Suisse, and then once again crash out of the Vuelta a Espana. It was an unlucky season riddled with accidents. He took to the start of the Tour of Turkey to end his season as the main favourite but had a bad day on the queen stage. "If I'm beaten on the day by better riders, that's wonderful, but I just want to be able to show my best performance on the day and I just felt like until stage 7 atTurkey, I wasn't able to actually do that." On stage 7 he bounced back to take an impressive solo win.
"It was good to get the win for the team but I was at that race fully focused on 2024. Anything that I did in this race was good for the next year and anything that I could take out of it was going to be a positive," he shares, "I put a lot of work in even though I didn't want to, so to be able to get something out of it was good.” Now Vine collects himself, he already had his mind in 2024 but will soon also put his body into it, as he is returning to the Tour Down Under to try and win again so he will likely have to come in to the season in flying form.
“I have lots of learnings about how the team rides in Grand Tours, that's the main thing. How to support a leader, how to ride for a GC leader - because I've never done that before," he continues, sharing his ultimate goal. "I've ridden for sprinters, but never done it for a GC guy, so learning how they operate, learning how I can best support them in that role in the Grand Tour and then also be at the level that I need to be that I can also do my own thing as well. Adam Yates proved at the Tour what a really good GC rider can do in support of a leader. I was hoping to try and do something similar, maybe not to the same level at the Vuelta, but something similar, but that's the goal.”
