Jay Vine may skip the Australian road cycling championships next year, peeved at the backhanded compliment that Jayco-AlUla paid him.
Vine has dominated the Australian summer, winning the time trial at the road nationals earlier this month in Perth.
He won his second Tour Down Under title on Sunday, successfully defending his big lead despite being caught in a crash when two kangaroos bounded into the peloton.
His UAE Team Emriates squad finished with less than half their riders because of crashes and withdrawals.
But Vine remains non-plussed at the tactics of the Jayco AlUla team in the road race at the nationals.
That event was most notable for Pat Eddy scoring a boilover win when he took full toll of Jayco AlUla, Australia's only WorldTour team, botching their tactics at the finish.
Earlier in the race, Vine had demonstrated he was the strongest rider with a power of work to help bring back a breakaway.
But Vine had no teammates and he said Jayco AlUla had used their weight of numbers in the Australians-only race to negate his strong form.
"I was more annoyed at the nationals that I'd spent all week going through the game theory of six (Jayco AlUla) riders," he said after Sunday's final Tour stage.
"It was the fact whenever I was in a move, even with four Jayco riders, the group stopped.
"So it became very clear that I was not allowed to be in the group, even I was solo.
"If I'm not allowed to race my bike, even in my own national championships, well, maybe I don't even sign on next year."
The nationals road race was the only glitch in an outstanding start to the season for Vine.
A year ago, he came to the Australian summer not quite in the necessary form and his results reflected that.
This time, no-one could touch him as he won his second Tour Down Under overall title.
There were still mixed feelings about the Tour win - pleased he also won a stage, but feeling his team could have done even better had it not been for their shocking luck.
"It's a really nice feeling. Last time in 2023, I threw away two stage wins, just purely thinking about the GC (general classification)," he said.
"Obviously if we had more guys - we had a lot of bad luck - we could have gotten more out of this race."
