National Championships 2026 – Australia 🇦🇺 – Road Race [FULL RACE]

January 11, 2026

National Championships 2026 – Australia 🇦🇺 – Road Race ME – Perth – Perth : 176 km

The Aussie Criterium Championships have been held annually ever since 1994 and have seen some of the nation’s most successful riders claim the coveted green and yellow stripes. Taking place in late December or early January, the event has often marked the unofficial start of the road season – a sign to cycling fans all over the world that road racing is slowly returning. Criterium racing is a little different to the classic road racing we all know and love, but at its core it’s very much the same. Races consist of several laps of a short, sometimes technical circuit and often end in scrappy bunch sprints. Laps are typically quite short, meaning races only last for a couple of hours at most. Organisers also like to include a ton of corners and tricky bends in their circuits to really test a rider’s technical skills. In short, criteriums are road races on overdrive – action-packed, hour-long exhibitions where the nation’s best sprinters go toe to toe for the win and – most importantly – the bragging rights.

Continental rider Patrick Eddy (Team Brennan) claimed the elite men’s title in a dramatic Australian road race on Sunday, beating Luke Plapp to the line after Jayco AlUla went from a winning position to settling for the medals in the space of a kilometre.

With one kilometre to go, defending champion Luke Durbridge was still in the lead after nearly 40km out front, and was caught by Eddy and Plapp, who had been chasing with Ben O’Connor and Oliver Bleddyn (Team Brennan).

Despite being up against a multiple-time national champion, Eddy played the final hundred metres perfectly, coming off Plapp’s wheel to sprint to a surprising and popular victory, and the last of the 2026 Westbridge Funds Road National Championships.

Oscar Chamberlain (Decathlon CMA CGM) took third after the remnants of the peloton swept up the chaser in the final kilometre.

Eddy rode in the WorldTour with Picnic PostNL until the end of 2025, but took a step down to Team Brennan in 2026. Just a few days into the new year, he’s already shown his strengths are still at a WorldTour standard.

“I don’t believe that,” a still-shocked Eddy said at the finish. “When the break got that gap, I thought it was done, and we were just riding a bit of a Grand Fondo out there. But it all came back together in the last 40 minutes, and I thought I was a bit cooked being outnumbered by the Jayco boys, but… It hasn’t sunk in yet.

“I thought they [Jayco] had it with the breakaway, I thought Durbo was going to do it again, but Saundo [Tristan Saunders] and Ollie [Bleddyn] were amazing in that last hour and all day. We’re definitely the new kids on the block,” he said of Team Brennan’s superb effort.

A 14-rider breakaway went away in the first 40km of racing, and had a maximum gap of five minutes, but the group slowly whittled down until Durbridge attacked with 40km to go, ending up the sole survivor of the break as his companions were all swept up. Until the very end, it looked like Durbridge could defend his title from 2025, but a dramatic finale saw his own team chase him down, only to lose out on the win to Eddy.

The 13-lap 177km men’s road race was run on a 13.6km circuit, with 193m of elevation gain each lap. The course winds through Kings Park, passes the Swan River and then heads to the city centre, with riders tackling a punchy climb that tops out just 400m before the finish line.

Earlier in the day Mackenzie Coupland (Liv AlUla Jayco) won both the elite women’s road race title and the under-23 jersey in the combined-category race. Jackson Medway (Tudor Pro Cycling U23) claimed the U23 men’s road race on Saturday while Benjamin Coates (Manly Warringah) took the U19 men’s title and Neve Parslow (ARA Skip Capital) added the U19 women’s road race to her time trial title.

Now that the national road titles have been decided for another year, many of the riders will be heading to South Australia, some for the Santos Tour Down Under and others for the opening round of the ProVelo Super League, SA Kick It.

How it unfolded
It was an attacking start to the race, but the main early moment came after 30km, when a brief lull in the peloton saw a very strong, large group split off the front, including the likes of Ben O’Connor, Sam Welsford (Ineos Grenadiers), Chris Harper (Pinarello-Q36.5), defending champion Luke Durbridge and more.

With all the major teams represented in the front, the 14 leaders quickly built a gap of a minute and a half, but it remained a delicate situation, with far-from-seamless cooperation, and some chase from smaller teams behind.

However, after some initial hesitation, the break got themselves organised and in a rhythm of working as they pushed their lead over two minutes. With 50km completed, the leaders were: Durbridge, O’Connor, Harper, Welsford, Kurt Eather, Max Campbell, Alastair Christie-Johnston (CCACHE X BODYWRAP), Zac Marriage (NSN Development), Carter Bettles (Roojai Insurance Winspace), Ben Carman (St George Continental Cycling), Oliver Bleddyn, Tristan Saunders (Team Brennan), Reece Tucknott (Canberra MTB) and Jarred Anderson (South Perth).

Notably not in the front move was time trial champion Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), who was left in the peloton with no teammates.

Falcons Pedal Mafia duo Oliver Stenning and Nicholas Thompson sent two riders off in a two-up chase, which became five chasers on the sixth lap, but with the gap at four minutes, it was a tough task to try and bridge.

Despite being four and a half minutes down, the peloton wasn’t giving up early, and with 80km to go, they caught the chasers thanks to a push from Luke Plapp, Alastair Mackellar (EF Education-EasyPost) and Jay Vine.

This injection of pace saw the gap drop to three minutes over the next 10km, with Jayco AlUla playing a two-pronged game, marking in the chase group whilst also having leaders up the road. Brady Gilmore (NSN Cycling Team) was one of the main animators.

Meanwhile, up ahead, the lead group was breaking up as riders cranked it up over the climbs, with Welsford dropped, along with Anderson and Campbell. With 60km to go, 10 riders were left in the lead, and the gap was hovering around 3:15.

The impetus in the chase group was a little stop-start, likely down to Jayco AlUla’s position of being there but not chasing, and it was Vine and Gilmore who were really trying to get things going, with criterium champion Jensen Plowright (Alpecin-Premier Tech) sitting back and following.

Entering lap 10, it was again Team Brennan that was trying to shake the Jayco grip on the race, with Bleddyn attacking through the line, and Bettles following his lead. This stretched out the group and lured other riders into attacks, with Durbridge particularly marking things. This whittled things down, with a group of five initially in front – led by O’Connor and Durbridge – but things came back together, with nine riders 2:45 ahead of the bunch with 46km to go. Even with an hour still left to race, the finale was on.

A big solo move and a tense chase
With 42km to go, on a rise out of the feed zone, O’Connor put in his first big dig, but the Tour de France stage winner found it surprisingly difficult to shake his rivals, with Marriage glued to his wheel, though the acceleration did drop riders, including Harper.

Starting the final three laps, the leaders’ advantage dropped below two minutes for the first time, as Durbridge launched a solo attack through the finish line, eyeing up a long solo time trial as his way to win.

It was a tense tactical situation in the six-man chase group behind, as the domestic riders wanted to keep Durbridge close, but had the threat of O’Connor in their number, who they did not want to drag back to the front of the race.

With 30km to go, Durbridge’s gap was 40 seconds as some impetus perhaps fell out of the chasers, and the defending champion settled into his effort. Just two kilometres later, his advantage was a full minute. Meanwhile, the chasing group was swelling, as they’d slowed enough for dropped riders to make it back on, and were less than a minute ahead of what remained of the peloton, which didn’t include Vine, who had been dropped.

The peloton caught the remnants of the break with just over 20km to go, leaving Durbridge as the sole survivor. With his gap at a minute and a half, it was still touch and go whether he would hang on or if the win could still come from the bunch.

With 15km to go, Eddy and Rudy Porter (Jayco AlUla) set off in a two-man chase, but without buy-in from a larger group – and Porter largely marking, not chasing – it looked like advantage Durbridge as he took the bell and started the final lap. The gap to Eddy and Porter was 59 seconds, with the peloton another 10 seconds back.

The chasing pair were caught with 11km to go, as Luke Plapp and Oscar Chamberlain sped across the gap. Plapp then followed a move by Bleddyn and quickly took up the effort himself, looking like he was working hard to try to get up to his own teammate in the lead. He then sat behind the Team Brennan rider, but Plapp’s accelerations had cut Durbridge’s gap to 30 seconds with 7km to go.

With 5km to go, Eddy and Ben O’Connor joined Plapp and Bleddyn, with the two Jayco riders sitting back to try to force the Brennan riders to take up the race, which they did – Eddy attacked with 4km to go, dragging Plapp with him.

In the heat of the finale, there was no time for Plapp to play a tactical game, and the pair just went full gas, which put paid to the fading Durbridge’s chances of victory – he was caught with just 800m to go.

Despite being the strongest, best-represented team for the whole last part of the race, when it was man against man on the final rise, Plapp just didn’t have the sprint to match Eddy, and the Brennan rider sped to the win with relative ease, demoting Jayco to second in the race they set out to win.

Behind, what remained of the peloton swept up Durbridge, O’Connor and Bleddyn in the finale, with Oscar Chamberlain surging to third, whilst no other Jayco rider even made the top 10 – Durbridge sat up so markedly that he finished 24th, losing over three minutes in just 800m.

Results :