It was a soaring start for Jay Vine's 2023 season as he powered to the green-and-gold stripes of the Australian national time trial champion’s jersey and backed it up with a maiden WorldTour stage race victory at the Santos Tour Down Under.
He was flying. Vine continued on the same fast-track trajectory that saw him jump from continental teams in Australia to the Zwift Academy title in 2020, and then to complete new heights in his second season at Alpecin-Fenix with a brace of Grand Tour victories at the 2022 Vuelta a Esapaña.
Despite securing an extension to his contract at UAE Team Emirates until 2027, the rest of the season was far from plain sailing - “eventful” was how Vine summed it up when talking to Cyclingnews. A knee injury and Grand Tour crashes took the shine off what was a fantastic start to his time at one of the sport’s biggest teams.
The latecomer to the professional ranks isn’t dwelling on the past, now with 2024 firmly on his mind as he gets rare time away from the stringent WorldTour routine for a holiday in the UK, taking in Stonehenge, Bath and the joys of a full English download.
“I would sum 2023 up as eventful. Lots of lots of stops and starts, but hopefully I can have a good rhythm for 2024 and if I can keep a good January going through the rest of the year it’ll be nice,” Vine told Cyclingnews at Rouleur Live.
Vine said the Tour Down Under being in January meant “it didn't really feel like I'd done it this season. Maybe if it had happened in June, or even, you know, May, it would’ve felt like I’d done at least half the season, not just the first month.
“It shows how quickly one injury can change the year. But I mean, I'm happy with how the season went,” Vine said. “At the end of the day, I secured two major goals of my own - wearing green and gold and winning [Tour] Down Under, which is incredible.”
He’ll be back in Australia in January to defend his title and the ochre jersey, which was the massive highlight of a tough year.
It was the Grand Tours where Vine was most disappointed, coming into the Giro undercooked off the back of his injury but still looking strong in the first week. However, a crash on the wet and miserable stage 10 ended his GC challenge with the Australian being realistic in his interviews about his lack of desire to work his way back into the top 10 as it wouldn’t move the needle for him.
Vine’s humility was understandable with the GC situation now pigeonholing into a domestique role for João Almeida, which he performed dutifully, but he was of course still left wanting more having not been able to show his best.
“I was still frustrated after the Giro, just wanting to put a good race together,” said Vine. “If I'm beaten on the day by better riders, that's wonderful, but I just want to be able to show my best performance on the day and I just felt like until stage 7 at [Tour of] Turkey, I wasn't able to actually do that.”
Vine bookended his tumultuous season with the win to which he referred in Turkey, alongside the King of the Mountains jersey, but even that victory wasn’t without incident. He failed to vindicate his pre-race status as favourite after falling out of GC on the brutal queen stage due to stomach problems and a sequence of bad luck.
“It was good to get the win for the team but I was at that race fully focused on 2024,” said Vine. “Anything that I did in this race was good for the next year and anything that I could take out of it was going to be a positive.
“I put a lot of work in even though I didn't want to, so to be able to get something out of it was good.”
Lessons for next season
Vine’s transfer to UAE Emirates saw him jump from, at the time, a Pro Team with very few climbers to a WorldTour setup filled with GC hopefuls, and the knowledge that leadership opportunities would be far and few between. He now had got big stars Tadej Pogačar, Almeida, Juan Ayuso, Adam Yates, Brandon McNulty and Pavel Sivakov to compete and work with on that front.
Amidst the difficulty that comes with a Giro far from what he wanted and a DNF at the Vuelta a España due to another crash, Vine looked to the silver linings and lessons to take forward from disappointment, finding inspiration from his British teammate Adam Yates.
“I have lots of learnings about how the team rides in Grand Tours, that's the main thing. How to support a leader, how to ride for a GC leader - because I've never done that before,” he said.
“I've ridden for sprinters, but never done it for a GC guy, so learning how they operate, learning how I can best support them in that role in the Grand Tour and then also be at the level that I need to be that I can also do my own thing as well.”
Vine sees Adam Yates’ success at the Tour de France as a solid blueprint to chase, having tried to do so at the Vuelta but obviously not being able to take the full chance due to his crash.
“Adam Yates proved at the Tour what a really good GC rider can do in support of a leader,” said Vine. “I was hoping to try and do something similar, maybe not to the same level at the Vuelta, but something similar, but that's the goal.”
Vine said the route reveals for the Tour and Giro hadn’t distracted his focus on holiday while he dipped into black pudding and marvelled at the history of Stonehenge. His own GC ambitions are still very much alive, and expect him to be hungry for a cleaner run into the Grand Tours next year.
He won’t be alone in his endeavours, with wife Bre right by his side ever since the couple made the plunge to chase Vine’s WorldTour dream and move to Europe. Vine credited Bre for her incredible support, especially in his tough moments after crashing out of the Vuelta on stage 6.
“For starters, she was there at the hospital before I even got stitches in my arm…and then they decided that they weren't going to do stitches and just staple my arm back together,” said Vine.
“Mentally after [crashing], having a supporting partner behind the scenes just lets me do my own thing for a couple of days. And then it's trying to coax me back into the world after that. Like, with any job, you feel like you're working for your other half and it's a team effort too with a common goal.”
