'I hope I'll have a WorldTour place' - Jack Haig still looking for 2026 team

Jack Haig wasn’t supposed to be at the Tour de Pologne at all, but a crash at the Tour de France rewrote his summer, and so here he is in Wroclaw, sheltering from the rain beneath a canopy before the start of stage 1. Have bike, will travel. Such is the cycling life.

There have been changes in the way his profession goes about its business along the way, of course. Haig was forced out of the Tour when he was diagnosed with concussion after coming down in the mass crash at Mûr-de-Bretagne on stage 7. 

A couple of years ago, there’s every chance Haig would simply have ridden on and worried about the consequences later, but the introduction of the concussion protocol has changed the dynamic.

As Haig watched the remainder of the Tour from his couch, he could simultaneously regret how a seemingly minor crash had forced him out of the race while appreciating that the mechanism that sent him home had been designed for his own safety. 

“It’s been a little bit interesting because I crashed and then I clearly had some form of concussion after the crash, but then by the time I arrived to the team hotel that night, I was more or less feeling OK,” Haig said. 

“Sure, I was a bit sore, I had some skin off and everything, but it feels a little bit weird to leave the Tour de France that way. But on the other hand, it’s so easy to have it go the other direction, where it could have gotten a lot worse if I’d kept racing. 

“I still believe it was the right decision not to finish, but it can leave you a little bit mentally feeling a bit strange. When I was at home, nothing was broken, and I was physically more or less ok.

“I think if it had happened a couple years ago, I probably would have just continued, because the athlete mentality is always to keep going. So you kind of need the people like the race doctor or the sports director or the mechanic to step in and say, ‘Hey, actually, you know what, you don't look 100%, maybe it’s best you go check yourself out.’”

No rider ever wants to abandon the Tour, but Haig had even more reason to remain in the race. The Australian’s contract with Bahrain Victorious expires at the end of this season, and he has yet to find a team for 2026. Leaving the Tour meant leaving the sport’s greatest shop window.

Still only 31, Haig clearly has plenty more to offer, and it seems hard to fathom how one of the world’s best mountain domestiques – and a man with a Vuelta a España podium finish on his palmarès – could find himself without a contract at this point in the year. But such is the nature of the transfer market; this has always been a fickle business. Some things never change.

“For the moment, I don't have a contract, so I’m still waiting,” Haig said. “I hope I will find something. I’m not too stressed, but of course, I would have liked to have something already signed by now. If nothing comes, nothing comes, and it's been a nice ride to here. But I hope I’ll have a place in the WorldTour for next year.”

It remains to be seen if that place will be with Bahrain Victorious, where he has spent the last five seasons. “I would never close the door on them, but I’m not sure the door is very open,” he said.

No matter, Haig is pencilled into the Bahrain Victorious squad for the Vuelta a España as a key support for Antonio Tiberi, and he lines up alongside the Italian at the Tour de Pologne this week. Indeed, this marks Haig’s first time in Poland since he scored his maiden professional victory in Zakopane back in 2017.

“I’ve not won too much, but I look back at the wins that I have had and especially the one here in Poland. It was my second year as a pro, and I think it really kind of set up my career,” Haig said. “I’ve done a lot of racing in Spain, and the other option would have been to race the Vuelta a Burgos, so it’s nice to change and come here.”