Featured image courtesy of BettiniPhoto Luca Bettini
Hallelujah! The road cycling season has finally returned to my television screen. I’ll have a piece out soon to round it all up as early stage race season in Europe does not get as much coverage as a Paris-Nice for example.
What I can write about though is how intrigued I am for a new WorldTour season to get going. It’s time to see the greatest names in cycling race on the biggest stage of all – a 2022 UCI WorldTour that of course features Monuments, Grand Tours and World Championships, but also some decisive races in between.
To start the 2022 WorldTour, the fourth edition of the UAE Tour for seven days from Sunday 20th February to Saturday 26th Febuary, gets us underway.
Flat stages for sprinters, an individual time and some tough but always familiar mountain stages – this makes the UAE Tour what it is.
While yet again we expect endless amounts of boring motorway routes for the riders, hardly any spectators and the important point about sportswashing discussed, what you cannot deny is how probable one thing this race will give you – crosswinds! Echelons, a split peloton and absolute chaos for every rider who has an individual duty.
Whether it is leading out their designated sprinter or shielding their team leader for the overall general classification, how the wind affects the race will be crucial.
At last year’s UAE Tour, double Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar took the overall title, a win win for his team in the land where all the money comes to fund UAE Team Emirates. What the Slovenian managed to do in 2021 was fend off the INEOS Grenadiers, an impressive Adam Yates riding one of the best races of his career.
A victory for Tadej Pogačar was achieved where nobody really learned anything new about this young phenomenon. We got answers about UAE Team Emirates, a team that tried to control the peloton on the mountain stages, but eventually saw Pogačar’s key domestiques drop away leaving him isolated.
As the Tour showed last year though, isolation with no team mates around you doesn’t matter for Tadej Pogačar and to be fair UAE Team Emirates did perform exceptionally well with Rafał Majka one of the crucial additions to the team last year.
How this UAE Tour plays out for Pogačar and his team will be interesting. Other contenders will be keen to make a statement on UAE’s own soil, including Adam Yates again, the return of Tom Dumoulin and last year’s Vuelta podium finisher, Jack Haig.
The Route
Below is the route map.
The 2022 UAE Tour will total 1,058km, an extra 14km compared to last year. This race has its critics, even I’m critical, yet what the UAE Tour does possess is a terrain like no other – desolate, mountainous, flat and urban.
The world’s best sprinters and climbers are ready to race, so what is on offer to them?
Many of the stages have a start and a finish at the same point. Stage 1 starts and ends in Madinat Zayed at 185km long, a flat as a pancake stage where the sprinters will contest the first red leader’s jersey.
Stage 2 is another guaranteed day for the fast men. 173km from Al Hudayriat Island to the Abu Dhabi Breakwater, the stage will take in the famous Abu Dhabi Yas Marina Formula One circuit. A section along the coast might see some crosswinds, so for the sprinters teams and other GC contenders, high levels of alert may be needed.
Next comes the individual time trial, a 9km route from Ajman and back to Ajman. If winds rips the race apart, then we should expect some significant time gaps.
Last year’s race saw INEOS Grenadiers’ Filippo Ganna dominate the TT and I expect nobody other than the current world champion to do the same again. The race against the clock also saw Pogačar take huge chunks of time out of others. The Slovenian claiming vital time out of his rivals was, in the end, a fatal blow.
The TT is also significant for where it is placed – one day before a mountainous test.
Stage 4 will see the longest climb of the UAE Tour – Jebel Jais at around 20km has an altitude of 1,491m above sea level with an average gradient of 5.4%. One maximum kick reaches 7.4%, so who will conquer the climb this year?
Last year saw young Danish talent Jonas Vingegaard make his first appearance as a fresh talent. With hindsight we now see what his potential really was – going on to claim second place at the 2021 Tour de France, Jumbo-Visma have a hugely talented rider at their disposal.
Whether Jonas Vingegaard gets to show off his talent again remains to be seen but for this year’s UAE Tour, Vingegaard is nowhere to be seen. Tom Dumoulin is back! The out and out leader for the Dutch team, instead of having a young Dane to help him, the likes of fellow Dutchmen Koen Bouwman and Timo Roosen will be around.
After two stages away from the flat, Stage 5 at 182km from Ras Al Khaimah to Al Marjan Island, will see the sprinters return.
Baking hot conditions will of course make this race tough but let’s once again not discount the winds. A coastal section on this stage will provide a stern test for the sprinters’ teams as well as the GC men.
When fighting crosswinds, every team will have to do their best to avoid splits in the peloton. This is why cycling is such a crazy, yet enthralling sport to watch!
The penultimate stage of the race stays on the coast, the UAE Tour heading to the international hub of it’s country – Dubai.
Stage 6 will be a 180km loop taking in all of Dubai’s sights, including a trip to the Palm Jumeirah island where the first of the two intermediate sprints will be held.
The race has had previous finishes on the famous island before. Since the old Dubai and Abu Dhabi Tour’s merged to form the UAE Tour, sprint finishes have seen Sam Bennett take the glory.
Except for 2022, the race will finish on a very technical course close to the Dubai 2020 Expo site.
Who will come out on top as the first major gathering of top sprinters takes place? Mark Cavendish, Dylan Groenewegen, Elia Viviani, Sam Bennett, Jasper Philipsen, Arnaud Démare, Pascal Ackermann and Alberto Dainese are all big names ready to fight it out!
The final stage of the 2022 UAE Tour sees the riders start at the base of Jebel Hafeet, the mountain they will finish atop of come 148km.
Out of the town of Al Ain, it’ll be desert landscapes, towns and then a mountain to climb. Jebel Hafeet is shorter than Jebel Jais but it is far steeper, with an average gradient of 7.2% and a peak of 10.8% – 1,025m in altitude too.
The GC will be concluded atop the mountain and a reminder of who has won at Jebel Hafeet since the UAE Tour began in 2019 – Alejandro Valverde, Adam Yates and Tadej Pogačar.
Riders to watch
In the early European races, we’ve already sprinting names take wins. Mark Cavendish took one stage at the Tour of Oman in a battle against UAE’s Fernando Gaviria. Elia Viviani is also back for the INEOS Grenadiers as evident in Provence and in Dutchman Dylan Groenewegen, I am in the mood to forgive after that awful crash in Poland two years ago. It took out Fabio Jakobsen for a while, but I genuinely cannot wait to see what Groenewegen can do for his new team BikeExchange-Jayco.
If you can win early in the season, it’s a huge confidence boost, most especially for the likes of Viviani and Groenewegen, who have had a difficult few years of late.
The 2022 UAE Tour will be the first head-to-head competition between some of the world’s fastest riders. Mark Cavendish, Dylan Groenewegen, Elia Viviani, Arnaud Démare, Pascal Ackermann and Alberto Dainese will all be hopeful to take wins.
Add into the mix Jasper Philipsen (who rides for pro continental team Alpecin-Fenix) and Sam Bennett, now back at BORA-Hansgrohe, and we’ve got a fascinating bunch of sprinters battling it out.
Only four stages are likely to be contested by the sprinters. Some sprinters will finish this race with nothing to shout about but others who do take victory will show who is the real deal for this long season ahead.
For the overall general classification, can anyone stop Tadej Pogačar, not just at this UAE Tour, but across the season?
Even though more threats will be apparent in other GC contenders, it looks almost unquestionable how the Slovenian is difficult to beat. If Tadej Pogačar rides with form, then the only way he can be stopped is if he’s caught by crosswinds or crashes out of contention.
As the defending champion and riding without us knowing what genuine form he is in, UAE Team Emirates will be up against the INEOS Grenadiers and Jumbo-Visma but it will be interesting to see how their new recruits in João Almeida and George Bennett ride in support of their new leader alongide Rafał Majka. If a stronger UAE Team Emirates dominates this race, the signs are looking even harder for others in 2022.
A runner-up finish for Adam Yates at the 2021 UAE Tour was a decent result. Yates was the only rider who could keep up with Pogačar on both Jebel Hafeet and Jebel Jais. The only setback for Adam Yates was the time trial, but overall across last season, you can argue 2021 was Yates’s best in quite a while.
I’m looking forward to see how Filippo Ganna rides, an Italian time trial powerhouse. He’ll start as favourite for the stage three TT but across the seven stages, as evidenced in his recent Tour de la Provence performance, how Ganna performs on the road to help Elia Viviani in the sprints and Adam Yates on the climbs. Who knows, Filippo Ganna could absolutely blitz the field in potential crosswinds.
Last, but not least, it is absolutely delightful to see Tom Dumoulin back on his bike! The Dutchman starts his 2022 season around a year since he decided to take a break from the sport. No cycling fan was sure whether Dumoulin would ever race a stage race again let alone a Grand Tour.
So what will 2022 bring for Tom Dumoulin? The aim is to regain his place at the highest level in world cycling, a pink jersey at the Giro d’Italia one target for this season. If the Jumbo-Visma man can perform at the level we were used to seeing him over years previous, the dream of maybe being in contention for the Giro may not be pie in the sky after all.
Elsewhere, other riders to look out for include Bahrain Victorious pair Gino Mäder and Pello Bilbao. Bilbao came ninth overall at the Tour de France last year and also has a knack for finishing high up the GC placings for stage races. Fausto Masnada for Quick Step Alpha Vinyl should be in contention to ride a high GC placing as should Frenchman Romain Bardet, who was back to his best last season. It’s also a fresh start for Russian Aleksandr Vlasov as he now rides for BORA-Hansgrohe after leaving Astana.
What can we expect from the 2022 UAE Tour? Four flat stages, two mountains to climb and a time trial – this race is suited to the best climbers and the best sprinters. How potential crosswinds affect the race remains to be seen.
More than anything, the first WorldTour race on the yearly calendar is about to begin!
