A long-awaited Tour Down Under return, crashes, genetic lotteries and the podium spot quandary - Jack Haig interview

Jack Haig breezes into the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in Adelaide, fresh from his training ride looking relaxed, at ease and happy to be back at the Tour Down Under, a race that helped launch him into a WorldTour professional cycling career. It's been a long time between drinks, with the rider not having taken on his home WorldTour race since 2015, and this time he is walking back into it as a very different rider.

The 30-year-old followed a pathway into cycling that started when he embraced mountain biking as a teenager in Bendigo. He has never raced the Tour Down Under as a WorldTour rider. In his first appearance, he was racing for the national team and finished just over a minute behind victor Richie Porte on the crucial climb of Willunga Hill, stacking up credibly with a 21st place on that stage among the WorldTour peloton. He turned professional later that year with Orica-GreenEdge.

This year, he's the GC leader for Bahrain Victorious at the Tour Down Under and is one of the nation's top cycling talents as one of the very few riders from the nation who has stepped onto a Grand Tour overall podium. However, in the race run-up hype, his presence somehow seems low-key.

Maybe it's down to the fact that the home team Jayco-AlUla draw the bulk of the attention, or maybe it is his calm, down-to-earth demeanour washing through. Or perhaps it's that he's not talking up his prospects in a race where the terrain and timing are not ideal. You get the sense he's just happy to be here, and whatever comes next is a bonus.

"Trying to fit in Down Under is getting harder and harder but as an Australian, I love coming back here," Haig told Cyclingnews. "It's super nice to be in the summer and to see a lot of familiar faces. And then it's also nice to say hello to the national team and see some of the new Australians coming up and try just, I don't know, hang out with them and pass on some experience and help them."

Results, of course, still matter, but in the early stages of the race, things weren't exactly all running his way, with crashes hitting his team, which already had split objectives given sprinter Phil Bauhaus was also on the start list. But Haig – who was also quite happy to jump in the team line to work and try to set up the sprint – was holding firm in the GC through the early sprint-focused stages.

At the end of stage 3 Haig was among a big group of riders sitting, not right at the top of the results table before the crucial dual summit weekend, but at least within sight of the top spot. This group included pre-race favourites like Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-QuickStep) and Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla) – a rider Haig knows well, having been a crucial support teammate during his 2018 Vuelta a España win.

When we spoke to Haig before the race, his target was a good GC result "maybe a top five" finish on GC.

"I'm quite realistic that it's really early in the season and you have some guys that specifically target this, especially the GreenEdge team [Jayco-AlUla], it is obviously a very important race for them," said the rider that started his career with the team.

"Whereas maybe for me it's more important to focus more on the March-April period leading into Paris-Nice, Catalunya period. It's more about just getting a good race, coming back to Australia, enjoying a bit of summer, seeing some friends and family and saying hello to the cycling community here."

His sports director Neil Stephens, a former cyclist who has also worked across teams from the Australian WorldTour outfit Jayco-AlUla to UAE Team Emirates before moving to Bahrain, was far more reluctant to put a number on it, but perhaps far more encouraging when talking of his rider's form.

"My way of doing it is you don't really quantify what you want to do, because you don't really know the level of other riders. I know Jack's level, he is in really good shape," Stephens told Cyclingnews on the start line of stage 2, in the main shopping strip of Norwood.

"Is he ideally suited to this terrain? I don't know if he is ideally suited, longer climbs would be better for him, but obviously longer climbs would be better for other riders as well, but it is what it is."

Whichever way the Tour Down Under goes, it was a start to the year that boded well for Haig the last time he was here. Perhaps this time it also could be once again. 

Tour curse transferred to Giro

Haig is heading into a new season after one that wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't his best. A tenth place at Paris-Nice was followed by a third at the Tour of the Alps. That boded well for the Giro d'Italia, the big target for the year which he was taking on after an annoying run of two years of unavoidable crashes at the Tour de France. Then Haig, with bike handling skills grounded in his mountain biking background and who had in the past so rarely crashed, had his Giro plans foiled by another.

"It was more frustrating as well because it was in the feed zone with a team soigneur who swung a feed bag into my handlebars," said Haig. "So it's just another one of those things where it was just bad luck.

"The same thing as when I crashed in the Tour de France [in 2022] and I broke my wrist – that was because a motorbike hit a hay bale that Primož Roglič crashed into, and then I just happened to be next to Primož. And this again is just bad luck."

He finished, the Giro but the crash took its toll, and the Italian Grand Tour didn't deliver the results he'd been hoping for.

Then after performing well at the Critérium du Dauphiné with fifth overall, Haig and his team then sat down and made the late decision to add the Tour de France back into his schedule in 2023. Mikel Landa was the supported rider, with Pello Bilbao as co-leader. Haig went there hunting stage wins and opportunities from the break. While those opportunities and stage results didn't materialise, he did relish the contribution he made to the team, particularly when helping his teammate Matej Mohorič win stage 19, and finishing without crashing too.

"I had a really nice time at the Tour de France as well. The group of riders that were there was super nice," said Haig. "So the season was personally not great – team-wise, I think I was able to contribute during the year. But I'm kind of hoping that now this season I can have a few more personal objectives that get ticked off."

The genetic lottery

Haig's plans for the season include Paris-Nice and Volta Ciclista a Catalunya as the first European goals, then the Ardennes Classics, the Critérium du Dauphiné and a trip back to the Tour de France.

"I'm kind of looking to try and get solid top five GC positions in some of these week-long stage races leading up to the Tour. Then we have quite a strong team for the Ardennes Classics … so I go there, supporting as well as looking for an opportunity and then we'll go to the Tour de France with probably myself and Pello."

Haig said the team would probably adopt a similar approach to last year's Tour de France – where Bahrain Victorious took three stage victories with three riders and Bilbao was sixth overall. There has been a change in mindset on expectations, that has somewhat been forced by the current reality within the peloton.

"I think we're seeing now that there's this small group of riders, that is maybe a level above everyone else. Yeah, so you have Primož [Roglič], Jonas [Vingegaard], [Tadej] Pogačar and Remco [Evenepoel]. So it's getting harder to try and target a podium in France."

That also goes for the rest of the Grand Tours.

"Of course, I would like to go back and try and repeat what I did at the Vuelta but I think the sport has moved on a little bit from then," said Haig. "To be honest, I'm not sure I'm at the same level as them, and I think maybe they've just won the genetic lottery a little bit better than I did.

"It's a bit hard to say out loud, but those guys are probably better than me."

The dominance of key riders has made the competition increasingly intense to find the podium spots, but Haig has far from dropped his ambitions for high finishes, maybe just instead fine-tuned his measure of what would make a successful year given the inescapable realities that have been placed before him.

So what would spell a successful season?

"Like I said, probably a top five in one of these week-long stage races and then either I'd really like to get a stage win in a Grand Tour or to do another good GC in a Grand Tour, so that's probably a top five at a Grand Tour."

And then perhaps start the 2025 season in Australia all over again.

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