After six rounds of racing, which started in January, Jack Ward (Team Brennan p/b TP32) and Sophie Marr (Praties Cycling) were crowned as the first winners of Australia's new ProVelo Super League and also clinched the professional racing contracts with Jayco-AlUla and Liv-AlUla-Jayco that went to the top Under 23 riders.
The final battles played out on Sunday's queen stage of the Q Tour, with a 111.7km-long race through the Moreton Bay Hinterlands for the men and a 90.3km-long stage for the women, and a climb to the finish line for both.
It was a tight battle for the overall league win and the stage in the men's competition, with Ward ultimately charging over the line ahead of his key rival Zac Marriage (Butterfields Ziptrak) to take the stage 4 decider and overall league victory. Marriage's second place, however, was enough to see him walk away with the Q Tour win.
"The team ... without them it wouldn't have happened," said Ward in an interview put out on ProVelo Super League social media. "They did so much work today in the latter half and bought the break back so I could go for the stage win – It was pretty special."
The final win meant Ward finished the six round event with a 21 point lead in the competition for the Jayco-AlUla stagairie role, which will start on August 1.
Marr took out the overall and U23 league win and season-long 2026 contract with the Liv-AlUla-Jayco Continental team after finishing with a fighting sixth place on the final stage of the Q Tour. The only rider with a shot of challenging her top spot heading into the final day of racing was her Praties teammate, Talia Appleton.
The 19-year-old Appleton won the Queen stage after breaking away from a lead group, that also included Marr, on the last climb with Alli Anderson (Butterfields Ziptrak) chasing. After her winning effort Appleton also came second in the general classification of the Q Tour, claiming 80 points for the runner up position and 20 for the stage 4 win. That left her just 13 points behind Marr's 589 points in the overall league rankings.
Anderson finished third on the league leaderboard, 75 points behind Marr, but second on the final stage which was enough to secure overall victory at the four-stage Q Tour, six seconds ahead of Appleton, as well as the 100 points that went to the tour general classification winner. Had Appleton taken the overall victory ahead of Anderson she would have earned enough points to switch which Praties teammate clinched the contract.
"I'm lost for words. Everyone was like 'you've got this, you've got this – basically the pen is in your hands'," Marr – who went into the stage with a 73 point advantage on teammate Appleton, said in an interview after the race which was broadcast live on SBS . "But I was like 'don't talk too soon'. Obviously the last stage was a big fight."
Given Marr crossed the line in sixth she was just out of the stage points but still managed to ease her fall down the overall rankings of the Q Tour, claiming a crucial 49 points with her fifth place on the general classification of the four-stage event in Queensland.
In the Under 19 category Hannah Gianatti (ARA-Skip Capital) claimed the overall league win with Tully Schweitzer (Praties Cycling) second and Amelie Sanders (ARA-Skip Capital) third. Ollie Jirovec spearheaded a sweep of the top six men's U19 overall league table by ARA-Skip Capital, with Connor Wright second and Benjamin Coates third.
You can find the results from the previous stages of the Q Tour here – stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3. Also see the highlights videos of stage 4 from ProVelo below.
