It won't be just the Tour Down Under that will capture the attention of enthusiasts in this very early part of the season. The most attentive (and curious) suiveurs will have noticed that, almost simultaneously with the race that will inaugurate the WorldTour calendar in Australia, the increasingly international cycling caravan will also be in Asia, where, from January 19 to 23, it will animate the first edition of the Bajaj Pune Grand Tour.

The race, while clearly not having the same appeal as the aussie event nor the same quality in terms of participants, still deserves to be kept an eye on as, according to the organizers, it represents India's attempt to regain, thirteen years after the last international event hosted on its soil (the ill-fated Tour de India), space and consideration within a movement, that of road cycling, increasingly inclined to broaden its horizons.

With this intention, India and particularly the Pune district have been working to prepare a multi-day global event that could involve teams and athletes from around the world, bringing the attention of insiders back to an area of the planet with a (so far) limited cycling tradition.

The mission, as demonstrated by the 29 teams and 171 athletes from 5 continents and 34 different nations who will line up for the 8-kilometer prologue through the streets of Pune on Monday, has been successful and marks, according to the race director and prefect of the Pune district Jitendra Dudi, "India's arrival as a new power in the professional cycling circuit".

"We are ready to organize a race that can serve as a new global benchmark for the UCI Asia Tour and represents a crucial moment for Pune and India. It is a source of pride to host this event for Pune, which can thus reclaim its original identity as the 'bicycle capital'," Dudi explained.

"For us, this is not about simply hosting a cycling race but about creating a legacy for Pune and India. In this, we are inspired by the 120 years of tradition of the Tour de France. The record participation we have registered for the Bajaj Pune Grand Tour further strengthens our conviction that India can now aspire to have its own "Pro Tour" in the future".

To reach this ambitious goal and become a fixed point in the professional calendar (in Asia and beyond), there is still a long way to go, and much will depend, looking to the future, on how the event will be able to elevate quality and reputation. However, the first encouraging steps have been taken, with organizers carefully investing in both local community involvement (3000 is the number of volunteers who will be engaged in the coming days) and infrastructure (500 kilometers of paved roads for the race in the Maharashtra state) and the recruitment of international riders and teams.

In this regard, the presence stands out of some of the best Continental teams (notably the Chinese Li Ning Star, the Malaysian Terengganu Cycling Team, and the Belgian Tartelletto-Isorex) and especially the Burgos Burpellet BH, a Spanish ProTeam that, leveraging the three-time national champions of Greece and Mongolia Georgios Bouglas and Jambaljamts Sainbayar and the recent African champion Merhawi Kudus, will go hunting for new precious UCI points to bolster their team ranking (the Iberians already boast 393 points), another aspect that, in the coming years, could convince new and more important teams to embark for central India and inaugurate their calendar here.