Cycling star explains why Australia’s Jai Hindley can win the 2023 Tour de France after taking lead

A lot of sports fans were shocked when Australia’s Jai Hindley won the fifth stage of this year’s Tour de France to earn the right to wear the famous yellow jersey, but cycling star Mark Renshaw wasn’t one of them.

The veteran made his Tour debut in 2008 and competed in the event several times during a professional career spanning 15 years – and he’s convinced the 27-year-old from Perth can be the first Aussie to take out cycling’s biggest event since Cadel Evans in 2011.

‘We have some really good young kids who are developing into some of the best riders in the world,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.

‘Jai won the Giro d’Italia last year, which is probably second to the Tour as far as rankings go. It’s three weeks long, incredibly hard, an unbelievable achievement.

‘He’s come into this year’s Tour as a leader within his team. He has the legs to win this kind of race.’

Hindley is pictured sporting the yellow jersey he earned by winning stage five of the Tour. Mark Renshaw believes he can still be wearing it at the finish line in Paris

The Perth-born star was overcome with emotion when he led the field home last week – now he just has to keep doing that for the rest of the torturous 3,400km race

Many competitors move to the front of the pack early in the event, only to go backwards when the course moves to the punishing uphill stages – but Renshaw insists Hindley won’t be one of them.

‘Jai is what we call a climber,’ he explained.

‘For him it’s going to be quite easy in the mountains compared to some of our faster, sprinter-type riders, which is what I did in the past. 

‘For someone like Jai, his race will start once they get to the big mountains, the Pyrenees, the Alps in France, his race will come alive. That’s where they start to battle out for the general classification. 

‘Then you talk about minutes between riders because the second and third week just becomes so brutal.’

Brutal is underselling it.

Hindley will cover an astounding 3,404km in this year’s event, much of it snaking up mountain ranges – and even his two rest days will be tough on the body, according to Renshaw.

‘These riders don’t spend months preparing, there’s years going into preparing to ride a grand tour,’ he explained.

Hindley is attempting to become only the second Aussie to win cycling’s biggest prize after Caleb Evans triumphed in 2011

‘I remember saying multiple times, this is definitely taking years off my life. 

‘It’s a sport that comes down to how hard you push yourself and how much you can suffer, especially in those mountains, because the more you can suffer, the more speed you can produce, the quicker you can climb. It comes down to suffering more than the next rider.’

Renshaw says the term ‘rest days’ is a falsehood because riders are doing anything but putting their feet up and watching TV.

‘A rest day for myself on the Tour typically would be one to two hours of cycling, with three to five-minute efforts when you really put yourself into the red zone.

‘You’re drinking and eating more when you’re competing, so your body goes into survival mode and tries to store all this extra water and food, so you need to keep the engine running. 

The Tour is so tough, Renshaw (pictured in 2019) believes competing in it has taken years off his life expectancy

The Aussie explained why the ‘rest days’ on the Tour are anything but for the exhausted competitors: ‘It comes down to suffering more than the next rider’

‘If you turn the engine off, then try to restart it, it might take 50 to 100km to burn off the extra fluid and carbohydrates, so you have to keep it on that high level.’

Renshaw believes cyclists on the Tour would get through more calories in a day than just about any other group of athletes in the world – but that doesn’t mean they can just get their fill of any tucker they like.

‘You could eat 20 Big Macs if you wanted to but it comes back to the food having to be of really high quality,’ he said.

That didn’t stop him from taking sustenance of a dubious nature in one race, though.

‘Once in my career I did take a shot of alcohol because I was so cold,’ he laughed. 

‘I had an old-school team staffer who said the best way to get warm is to get warm from the inside!’ 

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