For several years, the Tour Down Under was a sprinters' race. As we saw this year, the character of the race has definitely changed, favouring puncheurs for the overall win, but still giving the fast men a chance at stage wins.

Race director Mike Turtur is satisfied with how the race played out: “The balance of the race, with the combinations of days for the sprinters and all-rounders, is where we want it,” he said to the Sydney Morning Herald. “There was always an element of interest right up to the finish. If we can maintain that sort of design for the course, we will produce a good race.”

The Tour Down Under seems to have found a good recipe for an interesting race: Stages are short enough that they don't ask too much of riders just starting their season; at the same time the punchy Stirling circuit and the short climbs of Corkscrew Road and Old Willunga Hill offer opportunities to break the race apart while not being hard enough to give one rider a runaway lead, keeping the suspense to the final day. Nevertheless, Turtur hinted at possible changes: “We might have a surprise next year, you never know.”

What that surprise might be, he didn't say. One possible idea would be to replace or augment the People's Choice Classic criterium on Sunday with a prologue that would count for the general classification. Of course, logistics could spoil any such plans: Teams would have to ship even more material halfway across the world from their European bases – even Australian outfit Orica-GreenEdge has its service course in Italy. A solution would be to use regular road bikes on a short, city-centre route with plenty of corners; the Tour of Qatar and the Tour of Kumano have shown that this makes for an interesting twist to what would otherwise be a straightforward ITT.