Vine continues Aussie cycling victory spree in Europe
Jay Vine has continued the recent wave of Australian cycling success on the European roads, powering away over the final kilometre to steal the third stage of the prestigious Swiss race, the Tour de Romandie.
The 29-year-old Townsville rider's brilliant effort came on Thursday, 24 hours after Michael Matthews had won the Eschborn-Frankfurt one-day race and a week after Michael Storer took the overall victory at the Tour of the Alps.
Vine's win was also an emotional one for the UAE Team Emirates star as it was his first individual WorldTour victory in Europe since his terrible crash at last year's Tour of the Basque Country when he feared for a while he may never walk again.
Vine @TeamEmiratesUAE remporte cette 3ème étape!#tdr #tdrnonstop #tdr2025 pic.twitter.com/BjcBSNAzPC
— Tour de Romandie (@TourDeRomandie) May 2, 2025
"It's pretty incredible. It's been a long road back to recovery from my neck injury last year," said Vine, who after breaking two vertebrae was back racing four months later and even won the King of the Mountains classification at the Vuelta a Espana.
"It's three wins this year so far, and my first WorldTour win in in a long time (since the 2023 Tour Down Under), so I'm really happy. And I know my son and wife are watching at home," said Vine, who had become a father last year while recuperating from his horror accident.
It was a brilliant piece of opportunism that propelled Vine to victory just after the "flamme rouge" one-kilometre-to-go marker on the 183.1km trek around Cossonay in the west of Switzerland.
"The first two hours had been really, really hard, felt like it was being motor paced. But after that climb, the gap was being reduced to (the leader) Stefan (Kung), and I thought, 'okay, I gotta be up here in this group to minimise time gaps, so I might as well see what I can do and have a crack'."
Even as he made his striking attack, he reckoned he wasn't quite sure he'd be able to hold on.
"I'm not very bright, so I was like, 'Oh, is it 1k to the top of the climb? Or 1k to the finish?', he reflected with a smile.
"But that was probably my bullet, my moment to go - and I took it.
"Once I rounded the corner, I knew that it started to flatten off and go downhill again, so I was pretty safe by then."
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Vine's win leaves him still sixth in the general classification, 41 seconds behind French leader Alex Baudin (EF Education-EasyPost) but with two stages to come, one a brutal climbing test and the other an individual time trial, he's not ruling out the prospect of winning the race on Sunday.
"Yeah, it's all to play for tomorrow, and then the time trial on Sunday. I'm really looking forward to that, ahead of the Giro d'Italia. The GC is still wide open," he said.
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