It looked to be your typically doomed solo breakaway. One relatively unknown rider, breaking clear of the peloton with 50 km still to go on the opening stage of the Santos Tour Down Under, on a stage that was almost certainly going to be decided in a bunch sprint.
Only that’s not how it played out.
In her very first day of racing with Ceratizit-WNT, 22-year-old Dutchwoman Daniek Hengeveld turned that seemingly doomed breakaway into the biggest win of her career, claiming victory in Aldinga Beach and taking the leader’s jersey for good measure.
It was roughly halfway through Hengeveld’s time off the front that it looked like the peloton might have had a problem. The gap was 2:05 and more importantly, no one was really chasing.
Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto was the first team to commit, with Tiff Cromwell and Chloe Dygert doing a lot of work for Maike van der Duin, but with little more than 20 km remaining, Hengeveld hadn’t just maintained her lead – she’d extended it to 2:40. Without a concerted, collective effort in the bunch, the Dutchwoman looked to be on her way to an unlikely victory.
Other teams did eventually start contributing – Lidl-Trek, FDJ-Suez, and AG Insurance-Soudal among them – but by then the damage had already been done. They’d left it too late, and Hengeveld was free to fly to only her second victory as a professional and her first in a road race.
So how was a lone rider able to steal a march on the entire peloton, when that peloton included a bunch of strong sprinters, and when this was the only true sprint opportunity in this year’s Tour Down Under? Kiwi sprinter Ally Wollaston – winner of the opening stage last year, and the big favourite today – said there was a clear answer.
“I would say the biggest thing was a lack of cohesion and maybe a lack of commitment from a lot of teams, I think, including ourselves,” said the FDJ-Suez recruit. “We made a huge mistake in giving the breakaway a little bit too much rein.”
Wollaston admits that they didn’t just give Hengeveld too much time, they also underestimated her.
“I know she’s a really strong rider, but on a course like today you wouldn’t expect a solo breakaway rider to [win] – not when there’s five or six teams committed to having a bunch sprint today, and WorldTour teams as well.”
While Wollaston ultimately won the bunch sprint for second – 36 seconds behind Hengeveld – she admits she and her team would probably approach the stage a little differently were they to have their time again.
“Maybe we should have used a bit more energy in the chase, rather than for the lead out,” the Kiwi said. “But yeah, I think it’s a good learning. And we’re not the only team that made the mistake today.”
One of the squads most conspicuously absent from the chase today was the home team, Liv AlUla Jayco. Despite having one of the favourites for the stage in Georgia Baker, the Australian team was nowhere to be seen in the most critical moments.
Reflecting on how the finale unfolded, Liv AlUla Jayco sports director Gene Bates spoke of a “bit of a Mexican stand-off” in the bunch.
“First race of the year, nobody really knows where their riders are in terms of form … and there is quite a depth of sprinters here,” Bates told Escape. “So it wasn’t that surprising. I probably thought FDJ-[Suez] in particular would have got to the front a bit sooner.”
So why didn’t Liv AlUla Jayco contribute to the chase? Bates says it was a calculated risk from the team.
“We really wanted to save our riders for the lead out,” he said. “We were confident when Canyon and FDJ started riding that it would come back, but it didn’t. So that’s the risk we made.”
The lack of commitment in the bunch came as a surprise to Tiff Cromwell, one of the only riders to commit wholeheartedly to the chase.
“There’s some very fast sprinters here, and, you know, [Lidl-]Trek should have been there, FDJ[-Suez] …” she told Escape. “It took a bit of convincing. It’s always that poker game where everyone’s like ‘No, you’re faster. You’re faster.’
“We came here to win. So we’re like, ‘OK, we’ll take charge.’ We could have sat there and just raced for second or we could have, you know, taken hold of the race and shown our intentions.”
They did just that, not only when Cromwell and Dygert led the chase, but also when Dygert got clear inside the final 10 km, deciding to chase Hengeveld on her own. That dangerous move from the two-time world time trial champion prompted Liv AlUla Jayco’s Amber Pate and others to surge across, but they were all soon caught as Hengeveld powered on towards an unlikely victory.
Crossing the finish line in Aldinga Beach, Hengeveld was understandably surprised to have taken a solo win on a day where the sprinters should have triumphed. Coming to a stop, she embraced her team staff – all of them in shock – before slumping to the ground to catch her breath.
Speaking later, in the ochre jersey of overall race leader, Hengeveld said her winning move just sort of happened.
“I was actually not even thinking,” she said. “It’s a new team, we wanted to be aggressive, and I was actually struggling on the climb, and it’s like, ‘Well, I better just go now, because everybody is struggling.’ So that was my motivation, to just go and see how far I come.”
It wasn’t until the very end, after nearly 50 km on her own, that the 22-year-old allowed herself to believe that the victory was hers.
“I think literally in the last 1 k I was like, ‘Oh, I think I will make it,’” she said. “At the end, I just heard my sport director in my ear, like, ‘Come on, come on, come on!’ And it was like, ‘Oh, fuck. Maybe they’re like, really close!’ But they weren’t. So it’s really nice. I appreciate that he was still cheering me on. It gave me the extra watts.”
Hengeveld’s win comes after a 2024 season that was defined by a huge crash at the Tour of Britain in June; one which left her with a broken jaw, broken collarbone, and several broken ribs.
That crash took a significant toll, both physically and mentally, and she didn’t race again for more than three months. When the season eventually ended, so did her time with DSM-Firmenich PostNL.
Joining Ceratizit-WNT in 2025 has given Hengeveld a fresh start, and one that’s already paying dividends.
“I lost a little bit of confidence after the last two years,” she said. “[Today] I was finally racing like I was 18 again, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is why I race.’ So it’s really nice.”
Hengeveld will lead the Tour Down Under into its second (and penultimate) stage on Saturday. And that stage is an important one – with two ascents of the iconic Willunga Hill to finish with – a first for the women’s race – it’s the most climber-friendly day of the tour, and one expected to shape the GC. Hengeveld isn’t confident of being in ochre this time tomorrow.
“I did Willunga Hill a few times in my in my training, and … aaargh – that’s my answer” she said when asked if she’d ridden the climb before. “I will see. I’m not the typical climber. So we will see if I can stay in the leaders jersey. But otherwise I want to give it to one of my teammates.”
Regardless of what happens tomorrow, Hengeveld’s season is already off to the perfect start. She might have had some help from a disorganised peloton, but her opportunistic ride today was a reminder that even the most doomed-looking of breakaways can sometimes succeed.
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