Tadej Pogačar is the UAE Tour rider of the day

Heading into the 2025 UAE Tour, it was almost unthinkable to suggest that any rider other than Tadej Pogačar might win the two summit finishes and the overall title.

A week later, the world champion had offered little evidence to the contrary, convincingly putting the seal on his third UAE Tour victory with a 7.6km solo attack to win the final stage to Jebel Hafeet.

On stage 2, the Slovenian had proven the strongest of the GC men – three seconds ahead of his own teammate Jay Vine – in the time trial, while a day later on Jebel Jais, he waited until the closing sprint to burst for victory and the red leader's jersey.

Stage 5 saw him have his fun and games with a long – if almost accidental – stint out in the day's break alongside UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Domen Novak.

Stage 7 was to be his crowning glory, however, with the big winning move all set up for the toughest climb of the week-long race.

Pogačar had earlier warned about the possibility of crosswinds hitting the peloton during the final stage, featuring a long and flat run-in to the summit finish. He was spot on there, aptly recognising that the winds would hit and that the peloton would split apart.

He and two teammates – Rune Herregodts and Florian Vermeersch – made it into the front split. So too did several of the other main GC contenders, though there were victims – reigning race champion Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto) and Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) both missed the cut.

There were still many kilometres left to run at the time of the major ructions in the peloton, but even still, there was little doubt over the day's final outcome. Pogačar, who last season rode away from his rivals whenever and wherever he wanted to, would have the pick of the closing 10km to leave his mark.

Accompanied by two non-climbing teammates in Herregodts and Vermeersch, he didn't have to wait long to decide. At 7.6km from the finish line, just after Herregodts had pulled off the front, his day's work done, Pogačar went.

There was an attempt at resistance as riders including Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Oscar Onley (Picnic-PostNL), Iván Romeo (Movistar), and Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious) attempted to stay in touch.

It was all to no avail, though. The seconds on the screen kept ticking up as Pogačar rode off towards the summit on his own, ascending towards win number 90 of his career, to be accompanied by 91 in the form of yet another stage race victory.

At the finish line, it wasn't a shellacking as we have seen over the past year. Ciccone and Bilbao trailed home 33 and 35 seconds down, rather than minutes, though only five riders did make it across the line before the two-minute mark ticked by.

But it was all that needed to be done, a comfortable victory that everyone could've predicted the day Pogačar was announced to the start list. His 2025 season starts off with another win. Well, three, in fact. For his ease of domination and clear measure of the field on the hardest day of the UAE Tour, he's our rider of the day.