British sprinter Matthew Brennan swept to victory in Sunday's final stage as Jay Vine survived a high-speed collision with a straying kangaroo to win his second Tour Down Under.
Brennan, 20, coming off a breakthrough season with 14 wins for Team Visma last year, finished a misfiring week with a TDU stage win from New Zealand's Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe) and Denmark's Tobias Lund Andresen (Decathlon CAM CGM).
Vine overcame a torrid final day of the UCI World Tour season opener finishing with just two of his six UAE Emirates teammates to support him after he ploughed into a kangaroo and came off his bike with 95 kilometres left of the hilly 169.8 km fifth stage into Stirling in the Adelaide Hills.
Only in the Tour Down Under: Race leader Jay Vine and a few other of the world's best cyclists have been taken down by a kangaroo after it hopped into the peloton. pic.twitter.com/IbwAdtclhg
— 7NEWS Adelaide (@7NewsAdelaide) January 25, 2026
Vine's victory following his 2023 Tour Down Under success was a testament to his resilience and toughness to overcome setbacks, including the loss of his teammate and defending champion Jhonatan Narvaez in a crash in Saturday's penultimate stage.
The Australian protected his 1min3sec advantage to win the race from Swiss Mauro Schmid (Team Jayco AlUla) with another nine seconds to Australia's Harry Sweeny (EF Education-Easypost) in third.
"We started the week off positive but we just had more and more bad luck as the race went on and today was never going to be easy," Vine said.
"Two kangaroos blasted through the peloton as we were doing 50km/h and I ended up hitting one of them.
"Luckily, I am okay and happy to be able to hold on to the leader's jersey and take the overall."
Vine praised the unstinting support work of his British teammate Adam Yates who helped position him after his fall. After switching to two replacement bikes, he managed to stay with the pack and finish without further mishap.
For Brennan, it was a morale-boosting performance in Australia heading into the rest of the World Tour season.
"We have been disappointed with this week's results and to finish it off today I am very happy," Brennan said.
"Today, we nailed everything that we wanted to do and so leading on to the next races and the classics, it's good to open the mind up to things like that."