Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race Women

The women's Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, officially the Mapei Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race - Women since 2026, is a one-day bike race that gives the early-season women's peloton a rare WorldTour target in late January or early February, pairing coastal exposure with a circuit finish that favors alert all-rounders over pure drag-race sprinters.

The Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race Women is a one-day race that starts and finishes on the Geelong waterfront in late January or early February. The women’s race was first run in 2015, joined the Women’s WorldTour in 2020 and is usually settled on Challambra Crescent or just after it.

Rachel Neylan wins the first women’s race in 2015

The first women’s race was held in 2015, the same weekend as the first men’s race, as a round of Australia’s National Road Series. Strong wind on Barwon Heads Road and a crash after 14 kilometers, which brought down a third of the peloton, broke the field into pieces. A front group of 16 was left to contest the finish.

Rachel Neylan had narrowly lost the Australian road title to Peta Mullens earlier that month. She did not expect to win a sprint against Giorgia Bronzini or Gracie Elvin, so she attacked on the last steep climb with nine kilometers to go. She finished alone, 46 seconds ahead of Valentina Scandolara and Tessa Fabry. “I went a lot earlier than I expected but I saw an opportunity,” Neylan said.

Challambra Crescent, the climb from the 2010 Worlds

From the waterfront the route runs through Barwon Heads and along the coast at Thirteenth Beach, where crosswinds often pick up, to Torquay and Bells Beach. It then turns inland through Moriac and climbs steadily to Barrabool before dropping back into Geelong.

In the city the women ride two laps of a 21-kilometer circuit. Each lap climbs Challambra Crescent, which was on the course of the 2010 road world championships. It is one kilometer long and gains 87 meters, an average of 8.7 percent, with 11 percent in the last section. After the descent of Scenic Road there are two more short rises, out of Queens Park and up Melville Avenue, before the road returns to the waterfront.

How the race reached the Women’s WorldTour

The race was given UCI 1.2 status in 2016 and promoted to 1.1 in 2018. Amanda Spratt won the 2016 edition alone, ahead of her Orica-AIS teammate Neylan, and Annemiek van Vleuten won in 2017. In 2018 Chloe Hosking, a sprinter whose own team director doubted she could get over Challambra, climbed with the front group and won the sprint. Arlenis Sierra went clear with Lucy Kennedy six kilometers from the finish in 2019, dropped her and won by 19 seconds.

In 2020 it became the first race in the southern hemisphere to join the Women's WorldTour, and it opened that season’s calendar. The women’s and men’s races paid equal prize money that year, as they still do.

Liane Lippert’s WorldTour win in the rain

The 2020 race was run in heavy rain and wind, bad enough that the television helicopter was grounded. A crash about 20 kilometers from the finish brought down dozens of riders and left only some 30 at the front. On Challambra, Liane Lippert, Tayler Wiles and Brodie Chapman cut that group to about a dozen.

Lippert attacked on Melville Avenue with just under six kilometers to go. She won by 15 seconds from Sierra, Spratt and Wiles. She was 22, and it was her first WorldTour win. “I felt really good, so I attacked on the final uphill and never looked back,” she said.

How Loes Adegeest and Rosita Reijnhout won in 2023 and 2024

The race was not held in 2021 or 2022. It returned in 2023 at 143.1 kilometers, longer than any stage of that year’s Women’s Tour Down Under. Loes Adegeest had started as a helper for Grace Brown, but she and Spratt rode away on Challambra nine kilometers from the finish. Spratt took most of the turns to the waterfront, and Adegeest came past her in the last 200 meters. Spratt, the 2016 winner, had also finished third in 2019 and 2020.

In 2024 Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig attacked at the steepest point of the last ascent of Challambra and went over the top alone. Rosita Reijnhout and Dominika Włodarczyk joined her with five kilometers to go. The three did not work well together, and Reijnhout, who was 19 and had never won a professional race, went on by herself. She was fading in the final 1,500 meters as the other two closed in, then accelerated once more and held them off. “I thought 'why do we stop because there's a gap', so I was on my own and I was just fighting and pacing,” she said.

Ally Wollaston, the first rider to win twice

In 2025 Ally Wollaston spent most of the race at the back of the peloton, clear of the crashes, and moved up for the first ascent of Challambra. She said afterward that she was “really surprised actually, that I could go over with the front group.” She was still there after the second ascent, opened her sprint in the final meters and won by a few bike lengths. It was her first victory in a WorldTour one-day race.

A year later the climb went badly for her. She was dropped on the second ascent of Challambra, chased alone and rejoined the front group with seven kilometers to go. When Reijnhout attacked and the group split, Wollaston’s teammate Amber Kraak led the chase that closed the gap with 4.3 kilometers left.

Mavi García lifted the pace for a UAE Team ADQ teammate on the run-in, and Wollaston came past to win the 12-rider sprint from Josie Nelson and Mireia Benito. “So I owe it to my teammates today, if they weren't there, there's no way I would have gone back,” she said. No rider had won the women’s race twice before, and Wollaston did it in consecutive years.

This race comes in the opening weeks of the WorldTour calendar, when most of the peloton is still finding form, which makes it both unpredictable and revealing. The timing rewards riders who trained through December, and the route delivers enough climbing and coastal wind to punish anyone who arrived underprepared. Ally Wollaston's sprint wins in 2025 and 2026 showed that a fast finisher who gets over Challambra Crescent with the front group, or back to it afterward, can still win, and the Australian summer heat adds another variable.