As much of the road racing world is enjoying the off-season hiatus in the wintry weather of Europe, there is a race tucked among the mountains in Australia which each year seems to be drawing more and more WorldTour riders onto the start list as an early entry point to the Australian summer of racing.
They aren't chasing points – there is no UCI ranking or prestige, it isn't even a national level or state series race – but there is something compelling about this club-run race with an impressive history of acting as a proving ground for up-and-coming talent.
Be it the environment, the community or the sense of fun surrounding the event that draws riders across the levels, the Tour of Bright defies its status and, in the process, gives some of the best young talent the chance to prove what they have against racers in the top tier. This year, the start list includes the fourth-place finisher overall from the Tour de France, Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL), Giro d'Italia stage winner Luke Plapp (Jayco AlUla) and Australian time trial champion Brodie Chapman (UAE Team ADQ), who was also on the World Championship-winning Mixed Relay team alongside Plapp.
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Sure, the top-level riders are far from their peak, with both Onley and Plapp telling Cyclingnews they were just three weeks into their pre-season training, but even then, neither will be just riding around while the in-form domestically-based riders with more at stake at this time of year put the pressure on.
"After speaking to my coach, he was quite keen on me giving it a good test each day and having a good crack up the climbs," Onley told Cyclingnews after arriving in the area on Tuesday. "So now it's sounding like I can go all out and see what happens.
"But I'm not expecting to do much this weekend. So for the Australian guys and girls, they're already quite, quite deep into training and ready for nationals next month. And yeah, my goals come quite a bit later in the season, so it'll be a good test and it's always good to open the lungs."
Given the year the Scottish rider has had, even this early into the rebuild, no one will be taking Onley lightly, least of all Plapp, who, as a WorldTour rider, may seemingly have little at stake in terms of the on-paper weight of the results, but there is something else that is also important on the line – pride.
"I definitely want to win it," Plapp told Cyclingnews from his bush block, complete with Highland cows, a little out of the alpine town of Bright.
"It'd be three in a row and this is my town, so you can't let the out-of-towners take over and take the title back home," he laughed. "So I'll give it everything I can."
But so will plenty of others, given the overflowing entry list and continually building level at what Plapp says is the "most enjoyable race" of his year.
"I think what this year is going to provide over Friday, Saturday, Sunday is probably going to help it for next year, and in the years to come, it will become even bigger than it is. But even riding around now on Tuesday morning, five days before the race starts, to see everyone out there with their race wheels in and doing efforts, it is the most riders I've seen up here before the race, so the vibes are really good," said Plapp.
"You can sense that people are taking the Tour of Bright a lot more seriously than they used to and I think part of that's probably due to being able to get Oscar to come here and Kell (O'Brien) to make the start list so impressive."
The final test on the 'greatest mountain in the world'
The racing begins with an opening criterium on Friday night in the heart of Bright, which last year was won by Patrick Eddy and Talia Appleton. While it doesn't count toward the rankings for the overall Tour, it does provide plenty of entertainment for the crowds and gets the festivities underway before stage 1 of the Tour of Bright gets into gear early on Saturday.
The GC battle starter is the 90.2km Gaps Loop stage, taking on the Happy Valley climb mid-stage before heading toward the Mt Beauty side of the popular Tawonga Gap ascent and a finish line at the top. It's the steeper side of the climb, averaging 6.3% over its 7.6km, with a couple of steep ramps thrown in and is likely to straight away draw a clear line between who is in with a chance of finishing on the podium at the end of the weekend and who isn't.
Last year, two 19-year-olds, Talia Appleton and Jack Ward, won that stage and, in doing so, began their launch into the world of top-level cycling, both now having secured crucial development team contracts. Ward signed with Lidl-Trek Future Racing, and Appleton joined on board with Liv AlUla Jayco's Continental team. Appleton will be on the start line again this year, as will 2024 women's overall winner Alli Anderson, who will be joining Appleton on the Liv AlUla Jayco development team next season, along with Sophie Marr, who will also be racing in Bright.
Saturday afternoon, it is onto stage 2, a 17.4km individual time trial that will play out in the Buckland Valley. With the two Australian time trial champions on the start line in Plapp and Chapman there should be some pretty fierce times to beat on the out and back course, especially considering the presence of Team Pursuit Olympic gold medallist Kelland O'Brien (Jayco AlUla), who also came third in the time trial at the Australia National Championships this year, plus Onley, as well as both U23 Australian title holders – Anderson and Zac Marriage. Still, there will of course be a question mark over whether or not some of the riders from further afield will drag out their time trial equipment for the club-run race, and that could have a significant impact on times.
The final chance to reshuffle the GC comes on Sunday's stage 3, with a 59.7km effort that ends at the top of Mount Buffalo, which delivers just over 1,000m of elevation gain with relatively steady gradients of 4-5% across 21km. It's a peak which Plapp likes to playfully call the "greatest mountain in the world", a view that may be coloured by his clear affection for the home training climb and hard-earned position at the top of the Strava leaderboard for the ascent, one he clinched with a scorching time at the 2023 Tour of Bright.
Still, given Plapp's unrelenting advocacy for the race that is nestled around his Australian home base in the high country of Victoria and the calibre of riders that is helping draw to the event, he may have made it a far harder task to hold onto that KOM as well as the title of overall winner at the Tour of Bright that he has scooped up the past two years.
"It used to be I'd rock up, and I was pretty confident about it," said Plapp. "Now it's going to be a lot harder to win, so I'm starting to regret who's coming and who I've invited over," he added jokingly.
Cyclingnews will be on the ground in Victoria's high country to keep you up to date through the weekend of racing.
