Cyclist knocked off his bike by kangaroo, recovers to win Tour Down Under: “The most Australian accident ever

Australian Jay Vine was knocked down by a kangaroo on Sunday’s final stage, but recovered to win the Tour Down Under cycle race, the first event of the 2026 World Tour.

Vine was knocked off his bike when two large kangaroos bounced off the road in a high-speed section with about 96 kilometers (61 miles) left in the undulating 169.8-kilometer (105-mile) stage through the hills around Adelaide.

Video of the incident posted by SBS Sport showed Vine and other riders on the ground as the kangaroo jumps across the road, trying to avoid a crowd of competitors. One social media commenter called it “the most Australian accident I’ve ever seen.”

Three runners (Menno Huising, Lucas Stevenson and Alberto Dainese) were forced to abandon the race and the kangaroo was also injured.

Vine led the race by 1 minute and 3 seconds in the overall standings entering the final stage. But he was already at a disadvantage because two members of his UAE Team Emirates team, including defending champion and then runner-up Jhonatan Narváez, crashed on stage four on Saturday.

Juan Sebastián Molano also left the tour on Sunday due to fatigue, leaving Vine with only two teammates in the final stage: Ivo Emanuel Oliveira and Britain’s Adam Yates.

Vine got up immediately after his accident and changed bikes twice before rejoining the peloton with about 92 kilometers to go.

He remained near the front of the pack for the rest of the stage and finished 1 minute, 3 seconds ahead of Switzerland’s Mauro Schmid (Team Jayco Alula) and Australia’s Harry Sweeny (EF Education – Easypost), who was nine seconds further back.

“Everyone asks me what’s the most dangerous thing in Australia and I always tell them it’s kangaroos,” said Vine, who won his home race for the second time in three years. “They wait and hide in the bushes until you can’t stop and they jump in front of you. The point has been proven today.

“Two of them came through the pack when we were going probably 30 mph (50 km/h) and one of them stopped and turned left, right, left right, left right and I ended up hitting his butt.”

One of the kangaroos was euthanized and the second escaped, apparently unharmed, according to Canadian Cycling magazine.

Matthew Brennan of Great Britain (Team Visma) won the stage in a sprint ahead of Finland’s Fisher-Black of New Zealand (Bora Hansgrohe) and Tobias Lund Andresen of Denmark (Decathlon).

“It wasn’t ideal,” Brennan told local media after the finish. “We had Menno [Huising] who usually coordinates a lot [of the lead out for the sprint]but a kangaroo hit him, so it wasn’t great.”

The stage covered eight laps of a circuit that involved a slow, steep climb to the finish in the township of Stirling. There were two escapes throughout the stage, the second of which overtook the peloton with a kilometer to go.

Vine managed to overcome a tremendous amount of bad luck to win the race.

“This year we started very positive and got more and more unlucky as the race went on,” he said. “Today was never easy and I’ve been saying all week that it’s not over until it’s over.

“But it has been proven that this will not be over until this race is over for us.”