“I don’t know anything. I didn’t see anything. There’s no internet out here,” Team Jayco-Alula sports director Mat Hayman shrugged as he faced a gaggle of journalists questioning events during the third stage of the 2025 Tour Down Under. The day had ended in unexpected fashion: what was thought to be a general classification showdown was a relative stalemate between pre-race favourites. Despite initial fanfare surrounding Knotts Hill being included in the race for the first time, the climb didn’t lead to the expected fireworks. Instead, a big group approached the finish line in Uraidla and an opportunistic, bolshy attack from Movistar’s Javier Romo got him both a surprise stage win and the race leader’s jersey.
There are questions to be answered from many of the sports directors present at the race because Romo shouldn’t really have been able to win the stage in the fashion he did. His move was bold and brave, but with five kilometres of the stage remaining and just five seconds between him and the chase group, a concerted effort could have brought the Spanish man back. It gets more confusing when we begin to look at the make up of that chase group: Lidl-Trek had five riders and a promising sprinter in Albert Withen Philipsen, UAE Team Emirates were there with both Jay Vine and a flying Jhonatan Narváez and Hayman’s Jayco-Alula had numbers with Luke Plapp and Chris Harper. Where did it go wrong for the pre-race favourites who missed out on a stage win? The answer, some say, is radios – or a distinct lack of them.
Luke Plapp after finishing stage three of the Tour Down Under (Image: Zac Williams/SWpix.com)
Hayman pointed it out in his opening answer: there was no signal in the small finishing town of Uraidla in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills. Surrounded by Eucalyptus trees and with just the hum of wildlife as ambient noise, the ending to the stage three of the Tour Down Under took away one thing which has become crucial to today’s era of professional cyclists: technology.
Lidl-Trek, for example, with five riders in the finale, sent none of them to the front of the chase group in order to bring back Romo, despite fast-man Philipsen eventually finishing fourth on the stage – an indication that he was in with a serious shot of the stage win. According to the team, sports director Kim Andersen’s calls could not be heard over the race radio due to a lack of signal. The riders themselves didn’t get things together to pull on the front themselves.
“As you know we didn’t see anything from behind, but the guys told me that they made a mistake afterwards,” Andersen said after the race. “The plan was that we should have moved because we had five guys there that should have worked but they didn’t. That’s how it is, we will have a bit of a discussion about that. We can’t let that go, we lost by five seconds with five guys there. I can’t explain, I need to see what happened on television.”
A dejected Philipsen after the stage didn’t directly blame radios, but conceded that, in hindsight, it was difficult to put a plan together in the chaos of a fast, downhill finale: “I think I could have done more. We had a lot of guys from the team but it was quite hectic in the final and hard to get together so we couldn’t do it this time. It was hard to figure out what to do so we didn’t quite get the result we were hoping for.” the Danish rider stated.
While UAE Team Emirates blamed their lack of cohesion on Vine having a flat tyre in the final part of the race, meaning he couldn’t pull a turn to help bring things back for Narváez (who finished in second place behind Romo), stage three of the Tour Down Under still reveals some interesting questions at the start of this season. Are riders becoming too reliant on instructions from the team car? Should radio signals really have an impact on whether your team pulls on the front when there are five of you in the chase group? Is this not obvious to riders based on their racing instinct alone?
Javier Romo celebrates after winning stage three of the 2025 Tour Down Under (Image: Zac Williams/SWpix.com)
If there’s one clear example of why riding on feeling, rather than instruction, is a crucial part of bike racing, it’s stage three’s eventual winner, Javier Romo. The Movistar rider had problems with his radio too and no signal as he finessed the curves and undulations of the Adelaide Hills. As he stated after his victory, however, bike racing doesn’t always need to be so complicated.
“My team had a lot of confidence in me. They worked well to help me today with the important positioning and in the final I had good legs. I tried and it went perfectly,” the Spaniard grinned. “I had problems with my radio and my earphone was out so I just pushed until the final. Sometimes it’s better to have no information.”
It’s true that Romo’s rivals each have their own explanation for why the Movistar rider was able to hold off a chasing pack filled with some of the best bike riders in the peloton to take his maiden WorldTour victory. Some blame a lack of communication, others flat tyres, others radios, but Romo proved that nothing is more important than being able to read a bike race. Keeping a cool head in the final throes of a race is a big part of being able to win – tactics and mentality are as important as pushing the most watts. That’s what Romo had while others didn't and he’s deserving of victory because of it.
“Yep, it’s a good win for Movistar and Romo,” Hayman shrugged. “You have to take your chances when you can, hats off to them.”
