It is forecast to be 41°C in Adelaide, South Australia this weekend, just 33 degrees more than it will be for me in southern England. It might sound nice, even appealing to us in the northern hemisphere, but 41 is too hot. It’s a staying inside day, a day when you feel like the melting clocks in Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. It’s hot enough for people to be unwell, a temperature a thousand Calippos could not combat.
You might think it odd to open this with a discussion of the weather on the other side of the planet, but it matters because the WorldTour season has just begun in South Australia. When I was in Australia for the Tour Down Under two years ago, I remember how hot it was, and how difficult I found exercising in the sun. I might not be an elite athlete, but neither did I have to ride hundreds of kilometres.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
Stage three of the men’s Tour Down Under, on Friday, will be ridden in temperatures approaching 40°C, before Saturday’s Queen Stage, with its triple ascent of Willunga Hill, could tip over 40; the final day, stage five on Sunday, is forecast for similar levels of heat.
All three of these days, if the forecast temperatures, wind speeds and humidities are correct, will fall in the ‘red zone’ of the UCI’s High Temperature Protocol, which is measured using the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature Index (WBGT). This takes into account factors to produce a measure of heat stress in direct sunlight.
Anything over 28°C on the WBGT is in the high risk bracket, and stages three, four, and five all fall within this. It’s no longer a hot day, but a day of danger, with the weather putting a strain on the riders. They might be elite athletes who have raced in these conditions before, and have a team of helpers ready to cool them down at the end of the stage, but equally, it is putting them in peril, perhaps pushing their bodies too hard, with heart rates soaring. The UCI’s protocol suggests changing start and finish times, neutralising a part of the race, or even cancelling the event, if the level of risk is deemed too high.
And yet, as temperatures across the world continue to slowly rise, the party goes on. Cycling goes on. The WorldTour has arrived for 2026, it is a time for celebration, not introspection about rising global temperatures and how they might impact our lives and the sport. But road racing is a sport uniquely impacted by climate change, with extreme weather an all-too constant presence. It’s not always heat, obviously, with rain, snow, and wind affecting cycling in a way that other elite sports can escape from. It’s part of the beauty of it, why we love it, but as climate change disrupts our world, it will affect everything, and that includes bike racing.
Everything might pass completely fine this week, apart from the tell-tale white salt stains on kits, and a few riders dropping out, or blaming underperformance on the heat. The world will move on, and yet things will only get worse. There is a heat protocol, designed to keep riders safe, and it should be implemented rigorously. We shouldn’t wait for a serious incident to occur before acting.
The Tour Down Under’s slot in the calendar works logistically, but it might not work for climate reasons soon. Australia deserves an elite race as much as the rest of the world, but flying in whole teams from Europe does not help the climate issue.
Australian cyclist Maeve Plouffe, who is from Adelaide, wrote in The Guardian last week of her shame at how the heat impacts the Tour Down Under.
“It’s like hosting international friends in a house that is visibly on fire,” she wrote. “Don’t look at that, we say. Look at the spectacle. Look at the sunshine. As international guests, they don’t always know any different. But we do.”
She continued: “Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if we applied strict heat cutoffs consistently, whole chunks of racing would be at risk. Applying Cycling SA’s policy of cancellation over 37C, for example, would have resulted in 25 cancelled Tour Down Under race stages by now. If we continue on this trajectory, the race itself is at risk.”
It does not help for optics that the Tour Down Under is sponsored by Santos, the Australian oil and gas company, which has been criticised in the past for its role in greenhouse gas emissions.
Both the issues with heat and the unhelpful sponsorship are not unique to Australia. I’ve been at the Tour de France when temperatures have been uncomfortably high, days where I have been forced to seek shelter in a shady underground car park to stay healthy; I can’t imagine cycling through it. Much of this year’s Vuelta a España takes place in Andalucia in late summer, in what will surely be challenging levels of heat. There are also teams with oil and gas companies as partners, whether that be UAE Team Emirates and XRG or Bahrain Victorious and Bapco.
The protocol on heat needs to be used and enforced to protect riders’ health. Cycling also needs to wake up and realise that climate change has already changed the world, and the sport. 40°C is too hot.
This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.
If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.
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