Australia’s domestic road racing landscape is set for upheaval in 2025. After more than 15 years as Australia’s highest level of domestic racing, the National Road Series is coming to a close and in its wake will come the ProVelo Super League (PSL).
This new series has been founded by former pro racer and team manager Matt Wilson, and backed by Australia’s most generous cycling benefactor, Gerry Ryan. And based on what we’ve been seeing in recent weeks, it appears to be shaping up nicely.
Filling the calendar
The inaugural PSL will run from January through to late March 2025 and will include a total of seven events: two one-day races and five three-day Tours. While the full calendar is yet to be released, two events have now been locked in, and several others are all but confirmed.
PSL organisers this week announced that, as reported by Escape in March, one of Australia’s hardest one-day races, the Grafton to Inverell, will be included in the inaugural series. The 2025 men’s and women’s races will both be held on Sunday March 16 (all events in the series will have a men’s and women’s race). While the men are set to race the traditional 228 km route, it’s not yet clear whether the women’s race will mirror the course used in this year’s edition – 109 km from Mt. Mitchell to Inverell – or use something different.
Also confirmed for the 2025 PSL is another event in New South Wales: this one a new event in the heart of Sydney.
The Harbour City GP will be a three-day, four stage event that brings high-level racing back to Sydney for the first time in more than a decade. According to PSL organisers, the last time elite road cycling was held in Sydney was in 2013 “when one of cycling’s most successful event organisers, Phil Bates AM, delivered the NSW Grand Prix Series.” That series ended when the NSW government pulled funding for the event.
The Harbour City GP will begin with a harbour-side criterium on the evening of Friday March 7. A Saturday morning time trial will follow at West Head, before another criterium at Cronulla Beach on the Saturday evening – a race that will use the same course as the final Cronulla Grand Prix back in 2013. The race’s queen stage will be held in Akuna Bay on Sunday March 9.
“I am excited with the event program we have been able to create,” said Wilson. “It will provide for exciting racing across some of Sydney’s most iconic and beautiful locations and importantly fantastic opportunities for cycling fans and local communities to enjoy our elite road cycling talent on show in the Harbour City.
“It is the start of a new era for elite road cycling in Sydney and we are really looking forward to connecting with Sydney’s passionate cycling fan base.”
While the remainder of the inaugural PSL calendar is yet to be announced, there are clues about what the remaining five events might be.
Melbourne to Warrnambool event director Karin Jones told Escape in March that the Victorian one-day Classic would be part of the inaugural series. And in July, AusCycling announced that the Tour of Tasmania would not be held in November 2024 as first planned – “instead, the next edition of the Tour will be in February 2025 as part of the inaugural PSL season,” the announcement read.
Which leaves three races. Assuming Matt Wilson’s plans from earlier this year have come to fruition, those remaining three events will all be new three-day tours:
- An event in or around Adelaide, held during the Summer of Cycling period (perhaps close to the Santos Tour Down Under which runs from January 17-26).
- A new event in Melbourne.
- A new event in Brisbane.
PSL organisers are due to confirm a new race every week until the full calendar has been confirmed.
Live TV coverage
Making sure the PSL was broadcast live was a core aim for Wilson and co, and it appears that goal has been achieved. In mid-September PSL organisers announced that “Australia’s home of cycling, SBS, will deliver a comprehensive viewing experience for audiences throughout the PSL’s debut season.”
Races will be broadcast live on free-to-air TV via SBS and SBS Viceland and will be streamed on SBS OnDemand. “Replays, extensive highlights and behind-the-scenes content will be available on SBS OnDemand and ProVelo Super League digital channels,” a press release added.
This is a significant step up from coverage of the 2024 National Road Series which has mostly consisted of half-hour highlights packages broadcast on SBS a week after the event.
It’s not yet clear how many stages from the three-day tours will be broadcast live – Wilson told Escape in March that “it’s not going to be the entire stage of every race live – that’s unrealistic” – but organisers are heralding SBS’s involvement as an important milestone for the PSL.
“We committed to creating a season format that would be attractive to broadcasters, [allowing] us to build a narrative that will be engaging for cycling fans,” Wilson said. “We genuinely believe sport fans more broadly will enjoy watching live PSL action across the Australian summer. We’re committed to doing things differently, adding new elements and features to the broadcast product that we believe sport fans will enjoy.”
Road to the pro ranks
Australia’s National Road Series has long been one of the main pathways to the professional ranks for Australia’s best young riders, with many of the country’s biggest stars coming through the series. The PSL aims to play a similar role and has implemented a direct pathway accordingly – winners of the U23 men’s and women’s series will get to join Gerry Ryan’s GreenEdge professional setup (Jayco AlUla / Liv AlUla Jayco).
More specifically, the U23 men’s winner will join the Jayco AlUla WorldTour team in a stagiaire position from August 1, 2025 until the end of the season, while the U23 women’s winner will get a spot on the Liv AlUla Jayco Continental development team for the entirety of 2026.
“This stagiaire announcement further underpins Gerry Ryan’s incredible cycling legacy, highlighting the significant investment he has made in the sport over the past 30 years,” said Wilson, a former sports director in Ryan’s GreenEdge organisation. “The pathway from grassroots cycling, to PSL, onto a stagiaire position in a WorldTour team highlights both Gerry’s and the PSL’s shared vision for the sport of cycling in this country.
“The pathway for Australian riders is a big part of the PSL vision. The ability to get athletes to Europe and the WorldTour is a fantastic link that should inspire the next generation of Australian riders.”
The road ahead
We’re still roughly four months out from the first race of the inaugural ProVelo Super League and much is still yet to be confirmed. But based on the announcements we’ve seen so far, the puzzle pieces are starting to fall into place.
The widespread view is that Australia’s National Road Series was ailing, and that it had been for some time. Australia’s domestic cycling scene needed a reboot. The ProVelo Super League looks set to deliver that, offering a different model that, at least on paper, is better for race organisers, for teams, for those looking to step up to the pro ranks, and indeed for fans of the sport.
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