The 2025 World Tour season is almost the the male peloton, with the Tour Down Under getting underway on the 21st of January. Despite an impressive list of starters though, the race lacks that big star attraction according to race director Stuart O'Grady.
"Who doesn't want Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel on the start line?," O'Grady admitted honestly in conversation with AAP. "Certainly, everyone is after those big superstars. It was pretty much an 18-month project for me."
Sadly for the Tour Down Under and O'Grady however, despite all his hard work, it simply proved impossible for most notably Pogacar to make the trip to Australia. "The intensity and longevity of that season that Pogacar did, from the Giro to Lombardia, the team just said he needed more time to recover," O'Grady explains.
As such, the race has do without the presence of Pogacar for another year. "Globally, it's missing that Tom Cruise, if you want to say it, but I'm pretty happy with the line-up," O'Grady says of the startlist for 2025. "You want a rider who's going to move the dial, who's going to get the fans excited and have them travelling to SA. We have had a rich history of superstars coming to Adelaide and we're certainly doing everything we can to continue that."
"This race is at the highest level and it's organised so well," added UCI boss David Lappartient said before the start of stage one in the women's Tour, won by Dutch rider Daniek Hengeveld after a solo attack held off the peloton. "However, how can we also attract some stars? It was the case, it's still the case. Of course, when you have stars like Pogacar ... we want to have them in the Tour Down Under. It's definitely something we need to work on."
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