UAE Tour to kick off the 2022 WorldTour season
Pogacar and Ganna among stellar start list for Middle East's only WorldTour race
The 2022 season has already seen action across Europe and the Middle East, but things are about to get serious at the UAE Tour, which signals the start of the 2022 WorldTour series.
Running from February 20-26, the fourth edition of the only WorldTour race in the Middle East will once again host a peloton packed full of top-class talent.
Organised by the Abu Dhabi Sports Council, the 2022 edition of the race comprises seven stages that will take the riders across six separate Emirates, including a visit to the Expo 2020 in Dubai.
A well-established format will be followed, with four flat stages that could finish in sprints or be blown open by the wind, two summit finishes in the mountains, and one individual time trial.
The 2022 season is an important one when it comes to UCI points, with tickets to the WorldTour in 2023 and beyond to be decided on a three-year ranking system at the end of this season. The early racing in Spain and France in the past couple of weeks has already seen the teams in trouble come out swinging, but the UAE Tour is where things really heat up as the WorldTour series gets underway.
Top-tier events like the UAE Tour carry a much larger pot of ranking points than the lower-level early-season events, so we should see the table start to take shape as the big teams hit their stride.
Seventeen of the 18 WorldTour teams will be on the start line in Abu Dhabi - the only absentees being Cofidis - and they’ll joined by three-second division outfits: Alpecin-Fenix, Bardiani-CSF-Faizane, and Gazprom-RusVelo.
The headline name on the start list is two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar, who’ll begin his 2022 season and his road to what he hopes will be a historic third yellow jersey in July. The Slovenian prodigy will spearhead a UAE Team Emirates squad at full strength for their home race, with Joao Almeida and new signing George Bennett also in their seven-man line-up.
Pogačar will be challenged for the overall title by the likes of former Giro d’Italia winner Tom Dumoulin (Jumbo-Visma), Volta Valenciana winner Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe), and Vuelta a España podium finisher Jack Haig (Bahrain Victorious), with more names set to be announced in the coming days.
The UAE Tour is also set to host a sprint battle royal. With four potential bunch-finishes on offer, almost all of the world’s fastest finishers are in attendance, including Mark Cavendish (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl), Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal), Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe), Dylan Groenewegen (BikeExchange-Jayco), Elia Viviani (Ineos Grenadiers), and Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Fenix).
As for the time trial, it’s hard to look past world champion Filippo Gonna (Ineos Grenadiers) repeating his triumph on the corresponding stage last year.
The route
The race kicks off on Saturday February 20, with an opening stage that runs 185km out-and-back through the Abu Dhabi desert. Although there are some twists and bumps in the Liwa dunes at the outermost point, there are 45km of straight flat roads at the start and finish, where a bunch sprint is expected.
Stage 2 starts on Hudayriat Island off Abu Dhabi and heads inland before returning back to the coast for a finish at Abu Dhabi breakwater on the Corniche, where the sprint trains will have to deal with the sweeping bends in the run-in.
Stage 3 is the time trial, which will start to shape the overall classification. Taking place in Ajman, it’s a short effort on a 9km U-shaped course that is fast and untechnical, suiting the powerhouses like Ganna.
Stage 4 is the first of the race’s two summit finishes, at Jebel Jais in Ras-al-Khaimah, where Jonas Vingegaard began his breakthrough last year and Primož Roglič triumphed in 2019. A long steady climb of around 20km, the favourites’ group should be whittled down until the moves are made on the steeper slopes nearer the top.
Stage 5 is back on flat roads but the wind will be a danger and could split the field into echelons. Starting in Ras-al-Khaimah, it runs into Umm-al-Quwain and back out for a finish on Al Marjan island.
Stage 6 in Dubai features similar terrain and similar mid-race danger, as the route heads into the desert in between the start and finish at the site of the 2020 Expo in Dubai.
The final stage is the flagship mountain stage of the UAE Tour, finishing at the top of Jebel Hafeet, where the overall winner will be decided. There’ll be a fierce run-in to the climb, which has an average gradient of nearly nine per cent on smooth wide roads, with a slight dip and tight final bend into the finish. Last year Pogačar exploited that final section to emerge victorious after a ding-dong battle with Adam Yates (Ineos Grenadiers), in a reverse of the result the previous year. Other past winners on Jebel Hafeet include Roglič and Alejandro Valverde.
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