Double Kangaroo Chaos Will Reverberate Across The Cycling Season

The Tour Down Under loves its kangaroo iconography. Any given cycling season only truly begins once everyone gets to see images of star riders holding little baby joeys, and the first WorldTour race of the season also features a kangaroo as its mascot (Oppy, per the TDU, "represents dedication, grit and an enduring passion for cycling"). The point is to play to the rest of the world's mild, smirking affection for kangaroos, in a mostly successful effort to show part of what makes Australia unique. Carlos Alcaraz will get a kangaroo tattoo if he wins the Australian Open! Everyone loves kangaroos!

All of which is to say that when one encounters the news that a pair of kangaroos rattled through the peloton and caused a crash at the Tour Down Under, it is fair to meet the news with more amusement than horror. However, this not a whimsical story. Roughly one-third of the way through the fifth and final stage of the race, two kangaroos leapt into the main pack. Video of the incident picks up shortly after it happened, with one large kangaroo shown writhing around then leaping through and out of the peloton.