For any professional athlete, the goal is to reach the top. However, in some sports, the road to the top is more arduous than in others.
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03-25, 2025For cyclists, there are primarily two paths to the top: track cycling and road cycling. While track cycling remains an option for some athletes, four Australian athletes who competed in track cycling at the Paris Olympics are currently competing in UCI World Tour road races: Sam Welsford (Bora-Hansgrohe), Kelland O'Brien (Jayco-AlUla), Alexandra Manly (AG Insurance-Soudal), and Georgia Baker (Liv AlUla Jayco).
There are also athletes who develop entirely in road cycling, such as Grand Tour podium finishers Richie Porte and Jack Haig, as well as world and Olympic time trial champion Grace Brown, who honed their skills through the Australian National Road Series (NRS). However, after Porte, Brown, and others emerged from the NRS and won some of the world's top events, the series nearly lost its direction, its relevance declined, and it ultimately ended last year.
For riders, it feels like a road to the top is closing. Promoter Aaron Flanagan told ABC Sport: "Road cycling in this country has started to really struggle because even at a club level, running events is becoming increasingly difficult." He also stated that the decline of the NRS undoubtedly worries future riders about their opportunities to reach Europe.
Shortening entry lists, rising costs, and growing apathy towards a complicated season—confusing for both fans and riders—all contributed to a death spiral for domestic Australian cycling. Change is desperately needed.
Financial difficulties are not unique to Australian cycling. Earlier this month, British Cycling was accused by Active Fakenham of trying to stifle small races by demanding excessive safety measures, to the point that it could not hold its Easter Criterium this year. The demise of this event is part of a systemic pattern in British cycling, where the number of elite road races has plummeted from 17 to 11. The UK will host the Grand Départ of the 2027 Tour de France, but the positive atmosphere of British cycling around the time of the London Olympics is dissipating. Australian events are also feeling the pressure—Western Australia's Margaret River Tour is also at risk due to a 300% increase in traffic management costs last year.
Flanagan and former Australian road race champion and Herald Sun Tour winner Matt Wilson both have firsthand experience running NRS events—the Sunshine Coast Cycle Fest—and understand the challenges facing the sport as well as anyone. Riders would often abandon the NRS mid-year to go to Europe before the events even finished, and the events were constantly losing money, so they were always looking for ways to cut costs. Flanagan said: "Your focus [when running events] is, how do I reduce costs without losing too much money? So you hold events early in the morning, in remote locations, to run them as cheaply as possible without upsetting anyone. It only leads to one outcome." He also stated that the events were really close to death, teams could no longer continue, and Cycling Australia was struggling to maintain it, with everyone taking risks except the association, making it difficult, if not impossible, to turn the situation around.
Considering all of this, domestic cycling has taken a huge gamble this year. Flanagan and Wilson came up with a radical new idea to revive local road cycling races. With the support of long-time Australian cycling patron Gerry Ryan, the NRS was abolished, and the calendar was compressed into a three-month summer series and renamed under a new banner: the ProVelo Super Series. But this is not without risk. "We're really mugs," Flanagan said, only half-joking.
In the ProVelo Super Series' inaugural season, Flanagan emphasized to ABC Sport that it "is absolutely not about disengaging from the sport." He said: "It wasn't in the past, and it won't be in the future. This is about working for the sport, trying to find a group of partners that can provide the funding we need." Flanagan and Wilson proposed a six-race calendar—which they hope to increase to seven in 2026. This year's season includes different types of events, with four being multi-format mini-stage races held over a weekend, and two events being traditional single-day races.
These new events—SA Kick It, Tasmanian Spirit of Cycling Tour, Harbour City GP, and this weekend's season finale Q Tour—primarily adopt a common format, including a criterium on Friday night, a time trial and kermesse-style circuit race on Saturday, and a longer final queen stage on Sunday. Flanagan said: "Straight-up criteriums are important because they're the best way to attract new fans. You don't need to be a cycling fan to appreciate cyclists riding fast on a street circuit. Anyone can understand and enjoy that."
One of the strategies the ProVelo Super Series is employing in these races is to bring back city center racing, including the Q Tour, which will feature a night criterium in South Bank. Flanagan admitted that creating and running four new events "almost killed" the ProVelo team and said: "We need to bring these events back to where the people are, we need to run them at times when people can actually watch. We know that's important because we need to stream it for free as much as possible."
Another key pillar of the league is the inclusion of two of the most historic single-day races in Australian cycling—the Grafton to Inverell Classic and the Melbourne to Warrnambool. The Melbourne to Warrnambool, hailed as the second oldest single-day cycling race in the world after Liège–Bastogne–Liège, was first held in 1895. Flanagan said: "You can't ignore history. History is a beautiful thing, but I think the reaction from those events is equally exciting because their teams were also running on fumes. I'm just really excited to see them and their communities revitalized. What really excites me is that teams have entered ProVelo as wildcard entries, and they thought they'd only do one or two rounds, but now they're doing more—they've now done the whole season. That's really important because having viable events is one thing, but having viable teams is crucial."
Equally important as the new league is the feat that organizers have arranged for the competitors. The overall winner of the ProVelo Super Series under-23 category will receive an internship contract with GreenEdge Cycling, Jayco-AlUla, and Liv Jayco AlUla. Flanagan said: "I had dinner with [cycling commentator] Matt Keenan in April, and ProVelo was only two months old. He said, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we could get GreenEdge [UCI WorldTour team Jayco-AlUla] to give us an internship contract?' I thought it was a good idea, so I messaged Matt [Wilson], and he said, 'Yeah, that's a good idea, I'll ask Gerry [Ryan].' Of course, Gerry said, 'Yeah, let's do it.'"
This is a golden ticket to gain access to race at the UCI World Tour level and is undoubtedly a huge opportunity. Flanagan said: "I think we sort of knew it was important. It's the first time in the world that we know of that this has happened, but we didn't realize how important it would actually be. It's become the narrative. That's the narrative." This has also been a key driver for exciting racing throughout the season. Tahlia Appleton, who rides for domestic team Praties, withdrew from the Australian national team to compete in the Tour Down Under in order to give herself the best chance of winning this contract. The 19-year-old still has a chance, she won the first round of SA Kick It and took the lead in the standings. As the season progressed, her teammate, 20-year-old former track cyclist Sophie Edwards, overtook her and leads the standings going into this year's crucial final round.
The men's competition is equally fierce, with 19-year-old Jack Ward of Team Brennan p/b TP32 narrowly leading 21-year-old Zac Marriage of Butterfields Ziptrak Racing. Marriage rode for ARA Australia at the Tour Down Under in January, finishing second in the young rider category and was part of the breakaway in the first stage—although he still competed in the first two stages of SA Kick It to earn some points. Meanwhile, Ward missed last weekend's Grafton to Inverell race—where Marriage finished second—to compete in the Australian Mountain Bike Championships at Mount Buller, where he also finished second. Flanagan said: "Universally, people are commenting on the quality and intensity of the racing. These men and women are putting it all on the line. It makes for great content."
The success of the races is evident in the relatively short season—as is the live streaming, with live footage from cameras on Davenport bikes just one way the league is pushing boundaries, with more innovation to come in the future. The overall financial success of the league will take longer to determine. Flanagan and Wilson have Ryan's support and are in this for the long haul, eager and hopeful that the league will soon be a sustainable and profitable entity in its own right—not without reason, as it has already exceeded their expectations at this stage.
Flanagan said: "It's very brave. Matt and I have put ourselves out on a limb and effectively said, 'Okay, cycling, you need to let go, you need to give us this opportunity to do this.' We're going to make some mistakes, we will make mistakes. But as long as we do it in a transparent way, acknowledge those mistakes, and work through them with our stakeholders... everyone understands that we're working towards a sustainable goal. Gerry [Ryan] has been inducted into the Hall of Fame for his support of sport and his philanthropy in sport." But Flanagan said they don't want ProVelo to be a charity. He said: "We know this has to be commercially viable and sustainable. Gerry has set us a goal to get to that point in this period, and we're going to do everything we can to get there because that's what's best for the sport. It can't rely on the Ryan family's generosity. It has to be a good business, and we've made that clear to all stakeholders."
From a sporting perspective, the bigger mark of success will be seeing riders progress from the ProVelo league to the UCI WorldTour. If graduates of the WorldTour "ticket" eventually compete alongside the likes of Michael Matthews, Tadej Pogačar, Mads Pedersen, Jasper Philipsen, Lotte Kopecky, and Demi Vollering—all of whom will compete in this year's first Monument race, Milan-San Remo, as the ProVelo Super Series comes to a close—it would be a huge comfort to Flanagan and the ProVelo team. Flanagan said: "There have been plenty of moments where we could have given up. But I think Matt and I looked at each other at the end of our first live event at Victoria Park and said, 'Damn, this might actually work.'"
