Results Tour Down Under 2026 | UAE dominate stage 2 - Vine and Narváez take one-two victory and 'end' GC battle

UAE Team Emirates - XRG have virtually sealed the faith of the 2026 Tour Down Under as on stage 2 to Uraidla, the team exploded the climb to the Corkscrew, which led to an attack from Jay Vine and Jhonatan Narváez that was not followed by anyone. The gaps are huge and the team is heading to a certain overall classification victory after gaining around a minute on the competition.

The stage began with a breakaway of seven riders being formed including KOM leader Martin Urianstad, Joel Suter, Fran Miholjevic, Jensen Plowright, Pepijn Reinderink, Storm Ingebrigsten and Lucas Stevenson. It was a strong group that resisted deep into the stage, but it wasn't expected that the riders would be able to resist the surge from the peloton in the final kilometers of the stage.

The climb to Corkscrew (2.4 kilometers at 9.4%) is perhaps the most difficult climb of the race and it was expected that it would be attacked hard by the climbers, who wouldn't have steeper gradients all week long to create the difference. The last remnants of the breakaway were caught right before the base of the climb, where UAE's strong pace began to see many in difficulty including race leader Tobias Lund Andresen, and one of the main GC favourites Luke Plapp.

Adam Yates' pull was very strong and with 13.7 kilometers to go Jay Vine launched an attack that was then only followed by Jhonatan Narváez himself. The gap had created and nothing could then be done, as after the summit the race would continue to go uphill, and then the roads into Uraidla would be very fast, not favouring a chase. Vine did most of the work in front, but he and the defending champion rode to a race-defining performance.

Vine took the stage win with Narváez celebrating together, and the duo carved an entire 58 seconds over the chasing group where Mauro Schmid sprinted to a third place.