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Australian Jay Vine won the Tour Down Under – despite being knocked off his bike in a crash caused by a kangaroo.

Britain’s Matthew Brennan took the fifth and final stage of the race in Australia, on a day dominated by drama in the peloton.

The kangaroo ran across the road with under 100km of the race to go and launched itself into the peloton, knocking several riders to the ground before tumbling into more who were trying to avoid it.

Vine, having been knocked down, used a team-mate’s bike to claim the overall winner’s ochre jersey by one minute three seconds for UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

Visma-Lease A Bike rider Brennan beat New Zealand’s Finn Fisher-Black of Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe to the line for the stage victory after a powerful acceleration on the uphill sprint finish.

Brennan’s team-mate Menno Huising of the Netherlands was one of the riders forced to abandon the race, having been injured in the kangaroo incident.

Tobias Lund Andresen of Decathlon-CMA CGM took third on the 169.8km stage around the Stirling near Adelaide.

Switzerland’s Mauro Schmid of Jayco-AlUla was second overall and Australia’s Harry Sweeney third for EF Education-EasyPost.

Lund Andresen took the blue points jersey, with Norway’s Martin Urianstad Bugge winning the mint-green king of the mountains jersey for Uno X Mobility.

Brennan ranks highly among several young talented British riders competing on the UCI World Tour this year.

He won 12 races in his debut elite-level season in 2025.

The win caps a good week for British riders at the first World Tour race of the year following Ethan Vernon’s sprint victory on Saturday’s stage four for NSN – the new team co-owned by World Cup winner Andres Iniesta.

That stage had been shortened to account for temperatures of up to 43C.

UK road champion Sam Watson won the opening prologue of the race for Ineos Grenadiers.

Many of the riders will now take on the one-day Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in Melbourne, with Brennan a strong favourite for victory.

Brennan is particularly powerful on rolling one-day courses, and is set to compete in several of the sport’s biggest races this year, including the one-day Milan-San Remo in March, as well as the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix in April.

A severe winter storm has brought heavy snow, and freezing temperatures to Americans across the United States.

The National Weather Service has warned of dangerously cold wind chills with night-time temperatures falling below -20C in some cities.

Calling the storms “historic,” President Donald Trump on Saturday approved federal emergency disaster declarations in South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, and West Virginia.

More on this story.

A leading Venezuelan human rights group says at least 80 political prisoners have been released under pressure from the US.

Alfredo Romero, head of Foro Penal, said his group was verifying the identities of those freed from prisons across the country on Saturday – and more releases were likely to take place.

It is the latest batch of detainees released since the US seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a raid, and took him to New York to stand trial on drug-trafficking charges earlier this month.

On Friday Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez said more than 600 prisoners had been freed – but Foro Penal says this figure has been inflated.

Romero announced the releases on social media. He also posted an image of Foro Penal colleague Kennedy Tejeda who he said had been held in Tocorón prison, west of the capital caracas since August 2024.

In a post on X, Foro Penal lawyer Gonzalo Himiob said the number of releases could rise above 80 “as we proceed with verification”.

Previously, Foro Penal said that many those freed in recent weeks have not had the charges against them dropped.

This has left them in legal limbo and they have been barred from speaking in public, the group said.

Before this weekend’s developments, the group had confirmed the release of just 156 political prisoners since 8 January.

Some domestic opposition figures and at least five Spanish nationals are among those confirmed to have been freed so far.

Separately, Rodriguez said she was due to have a call on Monday with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, to ask the UN to verify the lists of those released so far.

Human rights groups and activists have long accused the government of using detentions to muzzle critics. The Venezuelan government has denied holding political prisoners, insisting they were arrested for criminal activity.

Many were detained after the 2024 presidential election, when Maduro claimed victory despite opponents and many countries disputing the results.