Friday 16 January 2015 14:34, UK
The 2015 UCI WorldTour kicks off next Tuesday in Adelaide with the Santos Tour Down Under.
Many of us will already have seen pictures on social media of the teams rolling along the coast in the glorious sunshine, posing for the customary cuddle-a-koala shot, and generally looking like the season gets under way with a mass Lycra-clad holiday to the beach.
So we could be forgiven for thinking the Tour Down Under is little more than a gentle way for the riders to ease into the season, shake off the winter blues and warm up for the serious racing to come.
But the Tour Down Under matters, and you only have to look at the results from seasons gone by to see that the riders and teams take it seriously.
That should be no surprise, of course. As well as there being WorldTour points up for grabs, crucially, teams' positioning here helps determine the positions of team cars in the races to come.
A rider will stand a much better chance at the Tour of Flanders, for example, if their support car is close at hand come that untimely puncture.
If we look at last year's battle for the winner's ochre jersey, between Simon Gerrans and Cadel Evans, it could be seen as something of a sign of things to come.
Gerrans went on to add Liege-Bastogne-Liege to his Tour Down Under victory, while Evans looked like he was getting comfortable in the maglia rosa at the Giro d'Italia for a while, before dropping off the pace and having to settle for a top 10.
Then there's the curtain-raiser for the WorldTour curtain-raiser, the People's Choice Classic, which is held two days before the Tour Down Under proper.
Last year's victory by Marcel Kittel saw him break Andre Greipel's two-year run and confirmed, were it needed, that we were seeing a changing of the sprinting guard.
Of course, the absence of Kittel's greatest rival tells us all we need to know about why this WorldTour race lacks the kudos and prestige of some of the other races in the calendar.
Mark Cavendish is one of several of the sport's superstars who prefer to start the season in an alternative southern-hemisphere sun spot, at the Tour de San Luis in Argentina.
Cavendish is doing the same this year, meaning we will have to wait until later in the season to see how that sprint rivalry is going to play out in 2015.
Many riders say they prefer the more relaxed atmosphere of the lower-ranking race, but with the likes of Giro winner Nairo Quintana and world champion Michal Kwiatkowski taking to the start line, just how relaxed a race it really is can be debated.
Two notable absentees from both races are both halves of the greatest rivalry the sport has enjoyed of late, Chris Froome and Alberto Contador, with each keeping their powder dry for January and saving their racing legs a little longer.
As such we'll only get a flavour of things to come when racing gets under way in the sunshine. But for cycling-deprived fans braving the bitter European winter, that'll do nicely, thank you very much.
Let the battles of 2015 commence.
The People's Choice Classic and all six stages of the Santos Tour Down Under will be shown live on Sky Sports.
