Vine wins Tour Down Under despite kangaroo crash

Australian Jay Vine won the Tour Down Under – despite being knocked off his bike in a crash caused by a kangaroo.

Britain’s Matthew Brennan took the fifth and final stage of the race in Australia, on a day dominated by drama in the peloton.

The kangaroo ran across the road with under 100km of the race to go and launched itself into the peloton, knocking several riders to the ground before tumbling into more who were trying to avoid it.

Vine, having been knocked down, used a team-mate’s bike to claim the overall winner’s ochre jersey by one minute three seconds for UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

Visma-Lease A Bike rider Brennan beat New Zealand’s Finn Fisher-Black of Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe to the line for the stage victory after a powerful acceleration on the uphill sprint finish.

Brennan’s team-mate Menno Huising of the Netherlands was one of the riders forced to abandon the race, having been injured in the kangaroo incident.

Tobias Lund Andresen of Decathlon-CMA CGM took third on the 169.8km stage around the Stirling near Adelaide.

Switzerland’s Mauro Schmid of Jayco-AlUla was second overall and Australia’s Harry Sweeney third for EF Education-EasyPost.

Lund Andresen took the blue points jersey, with Norway’s Martin Urianstad Bugge winning the mint-green king of the mountains jersey for Uno X Mobility.

Brennan ranks highly among several young talented British riders competing on the UCI World Tour this year.

He won 12 races in his debut elite-level season in 2025.

The win caps a good week for British riders at the first World Tour race of the year following Ethan Vernon’s sprint victory on Saturday’s stage four for NSN – the new team co-owned by World Cup winner Andres Iniesta.

That stage had been shortened to account for temperatures of up to 43C.

UK road champion Sam Watson won the opening prologue of the race for Ineos Grenadiers.

Many of the riders will now take on the one-day Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in Melbourne, with Brennan a strong favourite for victory.

Brennan is particularly powerful on rolling one-day courses, and is set to compete in several of the sport’s biggest races this year, including the one-day Milan-San Remo in March, as well as the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix in April.