Lorena Wiebes takes a shortcut(Image credit: Getty Images Sport)
Liane Lippert (Movistar Team) on the attack(Image credit: Getty Images Sport)
Emma Norsgaard and teammate Liane Lippert chased by the race leader(Image credit: Getty Images Sport)
Charlotte Kool (Team DSM)(Image credit: Getty Images Sport)
Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) secured overall victory at the inaugural UAE Tour Women race, as Charlotte Kool (Team DSM) won the high-speed final sprint stage to the Abu Dhabi Breakwater.
Longo Borghini set-up her overall success with victory on the stage 3 mountain finish to Jebel Hafeet with a dominant ride with new teammate Gaia Realini.
Trek-Segafredo carefully protected Longo Borghini and Realini on the flat 119 km stage around Abu Dhabi to give them an important early-season WorldTour win.
Realini finished second overall at seven seconds, with Silvia Persico (UAE Team ADQ) third at 1:18.
Longo Borghini thanked her teammates for their help during the four-day race.
“I am very happy about this and also really proud of my team and the way we rode this week. I think we really showed team spirit,” she said after lifting the winner's trophy and pulling on the red winner's jersey.
“Today was quite an easy day in the beginning but then it got a bit hectic, especially in the last few kilometres where the speed was high, we were in the middle of the city with all the corners and there were cat eyes in the middle of the road."
The fourth and final stage ended with another mass sprint and Kool came from behind to fly past Lorena Wiebes (Team SD Worx) in sight of the finish line. Chiara Consonni also passed Wiebes to take second place on the day.
“It was not on purpose,” Kool said as she came from behind to win the sprint.
“It was really hectic, I lost my lead-out, Pfeiffer, but I said ‘wait’, because she shouldn’t launch Lorena. Then I just knew I had to be patient and hope for a gap. When I saw the gap, I just went full."
How it happened
The general classification had been settled on stage 3, and the wind wasn't strong, so stage 4, covering 119 km through Abu Dhabi and its surroundings, didn't deliver as much action as the previous stages.
After several attacks, a break of Petra Stiasny (Fenix-Deceuninck), Aileen Schweikart (Laboral Kutxa Fundación Euskadi), and Iris Monticolo (Top Girls Fassa Bortolo) got away. They increased their advantage to almost six minutes with 75 km to go before Trek-Segafredo started to control the race.
Eventually, the sprinters' teams took over the chase and steadily reduced the gap. 30 km from the finish, the three escapees were only 30 seconds ahead, and the peloton backed off a bit in order not to make the catch too early and inspire new attacks.
The break was finally caught when Liane Lippert and Emma Norsgaard (both Movistar Team) launched an attack on the on-ramp to the Sheikh Khalifa Bridge with 14 km to go. Longo Borghini herself bridged to them at the head of a group of four, and soon afterwards, the peloton came back too.
In the sprint, Wiebes reacted when Mylène de Zoete (Ceratizit-WNT) opened the sprint 250 metres from the line. The green jersey quickly took the lead, but Kool and Consonni came from behind with superior speed and took first and second place.
Due to her second stage victory, Kool also won the points classification while Realini was the best U23 rider. Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka (Canyon-SRAM) took home the black jersey for the intermediate sprints classification, and UAE Team ADQ won the team classification.
Lukas Knöfler started working in cycling communications in 2013 and has seen the inside of the scene from many angles. Having worked as press officer for teams and races and written for several online and print publications, he has been Cyclingnews’ Women’s WorldTour correspondent since 2018.
