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Australian climber Jay Vine will be a DNS in the UAE Tour on stage 3, the day the race heads to its first summit finish on Jebel Jais, as the Tour Down Under winner is suffering from a knee injury.
UAE Team Emirates, which was already on the back foot, announced in a press release on Wednesday that Vine, considered pre-race as a potential overall contender, had had to quit the seven-day event early.
The release stated that “Vine came into the race with some light knee pain from a training injury which has not improved this week. It was therefore decided to withdraw him from the event as a precaution in order to allow him time to recover.”
Vine had a breakthrough performance last autumn in Spain, where he was double winner of climbing stages in the Vuelta a España and seemingly en route to winning the Mountains Classification until he crashed out. He followed that up by showing excellent early season form with an overall victory in the Santos Tour Down Under in January after also having secured the Australian National Time Trial title.
The new UAE Team Emirates rider, who made the switch from Alpecin-Fenix, would have likely been one of the team’s multiple options for the stage 3 mountain top finish, along with former race winner Adam Yates and American allrounder Brandon McNulty.
After winning their home event for two years running with Tadej Pogačar, who is instead racing in Europe this February, UAE Team Emirates are enduring a much more difficult race this year despite having a strong pre-race favourite in Yates,.
Vine, like all of UAE’s top riders, was caught out in the echelons on stage 1 of the UAE Tour, with the subsequent time loss all but destroying their chances for a third straight win. A solid but unremarkable eighth place in the team time trial on stage 2 for UAE has limited the damage but it remains to be seen what the team’s climbers can do on Jebel Jais and Jebel Hafeet.
What is clear, as the race reaches its midway point, is that UAE are far from dominating affairs in the way they have done in the previous two years and losing a strong rider like Vine has just stacked another obstacle in their way as they work to claw back time.
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