The road cycling season begins in Australia – a happy coincidence for Swiss Side!

The Santos Tour Down Under 2024 marks not only the kickoff race of the Men`s UCI World Tour season, moreover, it is a groundbreaking moment for Swiss Side as our wheels will touch the roads for the first time in racing as a wheel sponsor in the UCI World Tour. The best of the best road cyclists and teams are competing from January 13th, igniting the battle with a crit-race, until January, 21st. Ending with a 128 km long stage, finishing at Mount Lofty.

As the major technical partner of the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale team, Swiss Side will be in Adelaide and follow the peloton in the crit-race and on the first 2 main stages (Ziptrak® Men's Stage 1: Tanunda to Tanunda, efex Men's Stage 2: Norwood – Lobethal). Jean-Paul Ballard, CEO and co-founder of Swiss Side, born in Australia, so this a happy coincidence. He be on the ground to provide the team with technical support for the wheel – tyre – tyre pressure setups for each rider for every stage. His expectations from the new-equipped Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale team and the first race of the 2024 road cycling season are clear: “Our goal is to win races; however this is a process which will take time. Hence my goal this week is to support the technical learning and development process and also to build relationships within the team. And of course, to enjoy the atmosphere of this brilliant race down under!”

All riders will compete with the HADRON² Ultimate 500 or HADRON² Ultimate 625 wheel sets on their Van Rysel RCR – providing a top-level aero performance set-up on any road race course.

Learn more about the UCI team and the partnership Swiss Side x Decathlon AG2R La mondiale.

CEO and co-founder, Jean-Paul Ballard, is on-site to take care about all technical considerations the team faces for this particular race. We asked him a few questions about the challenges and how it feels to be live at the first UCI world tour race for Swiss Side as a wheel sponsor.

See video here.