TEAM JAYCO ALULA

  After Phil Anderson's ephemeral spell in the yellow jersey (30 June 1981 in Saint-Lary-Soulan), back when Bernard Hinault reigned supreme, Australia had to wait for three decades to get a "national" team in the Tour de France.

In the 1990s and 2000s, riders from Down Under earned a reputation as pioneers, but also as soldiers of fortune, as they had no choice but to knock on the doors of European and American teams in order to take part in the Tour de France. Between Phil Anderson and Cadel Evans, the first Tour champion from the Southern Hemisphere (2011), Stuart O'Grady, Bradley McGee and Robbie McEwen also wore the yellow jersey and Tour de France fever took Australia by storm, leading to the creation of the first world-class Australian team in 2012. The squad was named GreenEDGE for its environmental message and one of Australia's national colours, along with gold, and received the financial backing of businessman Gerry Ryan, a caravan maker and entertainment promoter (among other things) who had been sponsoring Australian races and riders for two decades. A sponsor popped up straight away in the shape of the mining company Orica.

After a rather unsuccessful maiden Tour de France in which sprinter Matt Goss finished five times in the top 3 (second in Saint-Quentin and Brive-la-Gaillarde and third in Tournai, Metz and Paris) without managing to clinch a single win, the squad managed by Shayne Bannan for nine years turned heads in 2013 with the infamous incident in which the team bus got stuck under the gantry at the end of stage 1, and especially thanks to its victory in the Nice team time trial and the yellow jersey changing hands from Phil Anderson's former disciple, Simon Gerrans, to the first African leader of the Tour de France, Daryl Impey! Its next two participations, however, were marred by bad luck. In 2014, decimated by Michael Matthews' crash before the Grand Départ in Leeds followed by that of Simon Gerrans, who was knocked over by Mark Cavendish on the very first stage, its best result was Michael Albasini's fourth place in Saint-Étienne. Matthews and Gerrans hit the deck hard again in 2015, going down in stage 3 together with Daryl Impey and Albasini.

The pendulum swung back in the team's favour in 2016, when Matthews broke the curse with his maiden stage win in Revel. After narrowly missing out on the yellow jersey on the Mont Ventoux, Adam Yates netted Orica its first distinctive jersey on the Champs-Élysées, finishing as the best young rider and fourth overall. In 2017, Simon Yates became the first rider in the history of the race to succeed his brother as the winner of the white jersey. Building its roster around the English twins and the Australian climber Jack Haig, who mirrored Cadel Evans's earlier transition from mountain biking to road cycling, the team, since sponsored first by Mitchelton and now by BikeExchange–Jayco, other businesses in Gerry Ryan's portfolio, has shifted its focus from its original specialisation in sprints to the high mountains, so far without success. Adam Yates, its designated leader when the road bends towards the sky, finished 29th both in 2018 and in 2019. However, a bumper harvest of four stage wins in the 2019 Tour and Adam Yates's four-day stint in yellow in 2020 more than made up for this disappointment! 2021 was an entirely different story: Michael Matthews came in a frustrating second in the opening stage and the points classification, while Esteban Chaves posted a muted performance in thirteenth place overall. Matthews bounced back in 2022 with a demonstration of pure grit that catapulted him to victory in Mende, two weeks after Dylan Groenewegen, a new recruit that harked back to the team's sprinting roots, took the spoils in Denmark. Caleb Ewan has since returned home, further boosting their prospects.

Following in the slipstream of his brother Adam in 2016, Simon Yates equalled the best ever overall result of the Australian outfit with fourth place in 2023. He must have felt a tinge of frustration that his twin (who had jumped ship first to Ineos Grenadiers and then to UAE Team Emirates) beat him both in GC and in stage 1 to Bilbao, where the Yates Bros. landed a historic one-two punch.