For many onlookers, the UAE Tour Women is a precession of sandy sprint stages won by Lorena Wiebes with increasing and alarming regularity. While that might be the case, the inclusion of the mountain stage to Jebel Hafeet provides the first mountain test of the season, and for that it is fascinating.
The race is only in its fourth edition and Elisa Longo Borghini is the one woman present who has won on the mountain before, first in 2023, when riding for Lidl-Trek, then last year with her current team, UAE Team ADQ.
Jebel Hafeet lies in the south of the Abu Dhabi Emirate on the edge of the mountains separating it from Oman. Covering 10.8km at an average gradient of 6.6%, it’s not the hardest climb the peloton will tackle this season and, at 1,025m above sea level it’s certainly not the highest. However, a large chunk of the middle section averages 8% and there are ramps of 11%, add in temperatures approaching 30ºC and a 20kph wind and it becomes a stiff challenge.
“The first part of the race is what makes me most nervous, when you get to the bottom of the climb it’s a process we all know how to do, that part I’m not so nervous about, but the rest…” Fisher-Black is one of the 50 debutants in this year’s race and hasn’t…
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