Surf Coast Classic

The Surf Coast Classic is a women's one-day bike race on the coast of Victoria, Australia, held in late January in the week of the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race. Its first edition, in 2025, ran 118 kilometers from Lorne to Torquay and ended in a bunch sprint won by Ally Wollaston. The 2026 race was canceled because of bushfires in the region.

The Surf Coast Classic is a women’s one-day race on the coast of Victoria, Australia, run a few days before the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race. It was first held in 2025, when Ally Wollaston won a bunch sprint in Torquay. The 2026 edition was canceled because of bushfires.

What happened to Race Torquay?

Race Torquay was held once, in 2020, and the Surf Coast Classic now has its place in the week. It was a circuit race: for the women, eight laps of a 13-kilometer circuit around Torquay, 104 kilometers in all. Brodie Chapman went clear on the fifth lap in 37-degree heat, was in a group of four on the last lap, left the other three two kilometers from the line and won by four seconds.

The pandemic stopped the Cadel Evans races in 2021 and 2022, and when they came back in 2023 there was no midweek race. In 2024 the women’s midweek race was the Geelong Classic, a criterium in the city’s Eastern Gardens that Sofia Bertizzolo won. The men raced the first Surf Coast Classic, from Lorne to Torquay, a day later, and the women’s race followed in 2025.

A 10-kilometer climb out of Lorne

The first edition started beside the beach in Lorne and went straight uphill, 10 kilometers inland toward Deans Marsh. From there the course looped through farmland and came back to the coast near Bells Beach to finish in Torquay, 118 kilometers from the start. Race Torquay and the Geelong Classic had been circuit races, and this was a road race from one town to another.

Ally Wollaston’s sprint in Torquay in 2025

The peloton split as it reached the top of the climb, and riders were still chasing when the race passed through Deans Marsh, 96 kilometers from the finish. With just over 70 kilometers left another split put 20 riders in front. Julie Van de Velde then rode alone to a lead of 30 seconds and was caught with 43 kilometers remaining.

The field was together on the run toward Bells Beach, and the race ended in a bunch sprint. Wollaston won it clearly from Chloé Dygert, with Georgia Baker third. It was the first win of the season for FDJ-Suez, the team she had just joined. She said afterward that “as soon as I started climbing, I knew I had a good shot at the win,” as quoted by Cyclingnews. Three days later she won the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.

Why was the 2026 Surf Coast Classic canceled?

Bushfires in the Great Ocean Road region stopped the second edition before it started. Two days before the race the organizers moved the start from Lorne to Torquay and drew a course of 136.5 kilometers that started and finished there. A day later, on the advice of police and emergency services, they canceled the women’s and the men’s race. Temperatures in the Otways, the hills behind the coast, had reached 45 degrees Celsius.

In place of the two road races the teams rode Cadel’s Criterium in Geelong, which for the women meant 20 laps of a 2-kilometer circuit in the Eastern Gardens. Martina Fidanza won, and the teams gave the prize money to Surf Coast communities hit by the severe weather.

In the first edition, in 2025, the peloton split at the top of a 10-kilometer climb straight from the start in Lorne. The race came back together on the way to the coast, and Ally Wollaston won the sprint in Torquay ahead of Chloé Dygert and Georgia Baker. Three days later Wollaston won the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.