When we look back at this year’s women’s Santos Tour Down Under, we’ll remember that Noemi Rüegg won the queen stage to Willunga Hill, took the overall lead, then held it through the final stage. We might even remember that the Swiss up-and-comer finished third on that final stage to Stirling, as a patient Chloe Dygert (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) sprinted to a comfortable victory.
But that brief summary doesn’t tell the full story of the challenge that faced Rüegg and her second-tier EF Education-Oatly squad today as they and a peloton full of WorldTour riders tackled five laps of the tough Stirling circuit.
“In most of the races we do, we are like underdogs,” EF Education-Oatly sports director Daniel Foder told Escape. “So for us to suddenly find ourselves in this position where we need to defend – also in a strong peloton – was not so easy. But we did our best and I think the riders left everything on the road.”
The pink jerseys of EF Education-Oatly were visible on the front of the bunch from very early on, making sure to mark any moves from the many riders within striking distance of the ochre jersey. In the end they might have come to the front a little too early – “maybe we lost too many too fast”, Foder said. By the crucial final laps, Rüegg was left with just one teammate: Aussie veteran Sarah Roy.
Roy did a mountain of work in helping Rüegg; a fact not lost on the young Swisswoman.
“Sarah was absolutely amazing today,” Rüegg said. “She really covered so many moves and also calmed me down. She was there for me just to mentally keep me up and motivate me. So yeah, super thankful for her.”
Despite Roy’s hard work, Rüegg was left to chase several moves down by herself in the last couple laps; attacks from former overall winners Amanda Spratt (Lidl-Trek) and Ruth Edwards (Human Powered Health). And then when it came to the finale, Roy too was distanced, having depleted herself earlier than she might have liked.
“I feel like I would really like to be there right in the end, and to even lead her [Rüegg] out in the sprint and be a part of it,” Roy said. “But we lost a couple of teammates quite early on.”
As Roy highlighted, that was largely due to the inexperience of her young EF Education-Oatly team.
“They’re still learning, and I think we could have saved some more energy in those first few laps,” Roy said. “It’s a real skill to be able to be at the front, but not on the front. I find that a lot of riders in all teams, when they’re in that role, they’re feeling good riding on the front, and it’s not hard, but they don’t realise that just those extra 5,10, 15 watts, actually, they’re not there then when you need to jump onto a wheel.
“They’ll get there. But I mean, I also had faith in Noemi that if she was just saving as much as she could until that last climb, she would be OK.”
That proved to be the case. Despite her earlier efforts, and despite not having as many teammates around in the finale as she might have ideally liked, Rüegg didn’t just have enough in reserve to make it to the final uphill sprint – she was also able to dash to third behind Dygert and Silke Smulders (Liv AlUla Jayco) and lock up the overall title. It was a ride that spoke of her considerable strength and potential.
Securing the overall title was a great relief for the Swiss rider.
“I was honestly really nervous at the start,” she said. “I knew it was going to be a tough day, and the course – it was hard to control with the attacks and stuff. We didn’t want to give it out of our hands so I was really nervous, but I also had a lot of trust and belief in the team.
“I’m super happy, still a bit in disbelief. I think it takes a few days to really sink in, what I achieved here. I’ve been working really hard for this the last couple of years and it’s just so nice that it actually pays off.”
For Dygert, the stage win was both a relief after a 2024 season where things didn’t quite go to plan, and proof of what can happen when she races with a little more patience than she often shows.
The two-time world time trial champion had been typically aggressive on the first two days of racing. On stage 1 she put in a late move from a peloton struggling (and ultimately failing) to reel in lone leader Daniek Hengeveld (Ceratizit-WNT). On stage 2 Dygert led the bunch into the final of two ascents up Willunga Hill.
Today though, the aggressive American kept her powder dry. While her teammates – particularly Tiff Cromwell and Maike Van der Duin – attacked repeatedly, trying to thin out the group, Dygert was conspicuously absent from the front of the bunch. That was until the final drag up into Stirling, where she blasted away from the bunch and won the stage by several bike lengths – enough to be given a one-second time gap on the line.
“I tried not to hit the wind at all,” Dygert said of her plan today. “I probably took a few risks by letting some things go when I probably should have jumped, but I just did not want to hit the wind at all. More of a patient game; more of me just getting the experience of just … being smart. And so, yeah, I’m really happy to pull it off in the end.”
When Dygert crossed the line she offered only the briefest of fist pumps, her face showing very little emotion. She said later that she was delighted to win – “it feels super great” – but her relative lack of celebration speaks to a rider always pushing herself to new heights.
“I’m never satisfied,” she said. “Even when I win I figure out how I can be better. I think the best example I can give you is in Yorkshire, when I won the [2019 Worlds] time trial by a minute and a half – there were still three times in that race that I messed something up. And I play it back in my head. I still remember that course like it’s the back of my hand, and there were things that I messed up in that race. I’m always striving to be better, striving to be the best.”
For Rüegg, her overall win at the Tour Down Under is confirmation of her talent, not just to the cycling world but also to herself.
“I think it will really give me a lot of confidence,” the 23-year-old said. “As I already said yesterday, it’s the thing I struggle with – my own confidence. But after these days I would be stupid to not believe in myself now. So yeah, I just want to go into the season, and try to make the most out of it.”
While the women’s Tour Down Under is now complete, a companion one-day event, the Schwalbe Women’s One-Day Classic, will be held in Adelaide next Sunday. It will be raced on the same day, and the same circuit, as the final stage of the men’s Tour Down Under, which begins on Tuesday.
After that one-day race, the women’s peloton will head to Victoria for the Surf Coast Classic and Cadel Evans Great Ocean Race. From there it’s off to the UAE Tour and then, eventually, to Europe where the season proper will begin.
Loading...
Loading...
Did we do a good job with this story?