Luke Plapp may only been able to hold onto the leader’s jersey of the UAE Tour for one day, but the Australian remained both upbeat and in the battle for overall victory.
World Champion Remco Evenepoel’s second place at the Jebel Jais summit allowed the Belgian both to move into top spot overall and simultaneously go from being tied on time with Plapp to being seven seconds ahead of the Ineos Grenadiers racer.
After one summit finish of the two on offer at the UAE Tour, it’s currently advantage Evenepoel, then. However, as Plapp pointed out, such tight differences at the top of the GC mean there is still everything to play for, plus being defeated by a reigning World Champion is hardly a disgrace, either.
“When you’re losing the jersey to the World Champion, there’s not much more to ask for,” Plapp told Cyclingnews moments before going to receive the green jersey of points leader, inherited from Evenepoel’s teammate and stage 1 winner Tim Merlier.
“For me, it’s still a great day, there’s still all to play for on Jebel Hafeet. I think if you told me at the start of the day I’d finish in the same group with Remco and still with all to play for, I would have taken it.”
He praised his Ineos Grenadiers teammates, too, for their considerable efforts throughout the long grind across the deserts of northern UAE and into the Al Hajar mountain range, saying “I think you saw Wurfy [Cameron Wurf] on the front all day. it was a great day all round.”
The 21-kilometre climb that followed the rolling approach roads saw virtually no GC attacks being made, and Plapp suggested that the three top names in the overall – himself, Evenepoel and Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious) – were content to reach the finish together.
“I think all three of us were sort of waiting to see what UAE were up to as well,” he pointed out, “it was sort of up to them to, I guess, make the race again because they’re so far out of it right now.”
What few attacks UAE Team Emirates made, though, with Mikkel Bjerg and Marc Soler half-way up, fizzled out quickly.
“We were waiting to see what would happen," said Plapp. "None of us really wanted to burn too many matches.”
Before Jebel Hafeet, the next three stages, he predicted, would not see too much of a battle for the bonus seconds as breakaways would likely soak them up and he wasn’t sure if there would be crosswinds again “as I’ve just been taking it on the day by day and not looking ahead so much".
“But I wouldn’t complain, in any case, if there were three sprint days and then a showdown on Jebel Hafeet.”
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