Australia, the land of kangaroos.
Not only was it the starting point of the UCI WorldTour road racing season every year, but like professional tennis, every new season also began here.
That was because January was still the depths of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, while here it was the warm summer season.
As riders from the major UCI WorldTour teams landed one after another in southern Australia, the Australian Open, one of the four Grand Slam tournaments held in Melbourne, was also underway.
Unfortunately, Huang Chong was now a UCI WorldTour rider and could not spare the time to go to Melbourne to watch the tennis. Otherwise, he really wanted to see a top-level event like a Grand Slam.
Especially since he retained memories from his previous life and knew that Zheng Qinwen, a Chinese player, would even reach the women's singles final at this year's Australian Open.
Back to the point, as the opening race of the UCI WorldTour season, the Tour Down Under consisted of six stages.
Its route was extremely similar to the Tour of Guangxi, with a large number of circuit races and no TT stage.
Strictly speaking, the first four stages were all sprinters' stages.
Other than S2, which featured numerous short climbs and rolling terrain, the other three stages all ended in flat sprint finishes.
And to ensure that climbers and GC riders had not come all the way to Australia for nothing, the organizers had set up two mountain-climbing stages with summit finishes in the final two stages, where the overall classification could be contested.
The first race day was the Tanunda city circuit race.
The full distance was 144 km, with three laps to complete, each lap roughly 45 km.
The stage featured two intermediate sprint points, located at 24.5 km