Image 1 of 7
The UAE Tour takes place from the 20th to 26th February and takes in 7 stages across the United Arab Emirates.
UAE Tour – Everything you need to know, including the route, favourites and outsiders for the WorldTour race.
Join Cyclingnews’ coverage of the UAE Tour Women with race reports, results, photo galleries, news and race analysis.
Stage 1
The 2023 UAE Tour begins as it did in 2021 from Al Dhafra Castle to Al Mirfa. It looks like a simple stage on paper with very few corners, but riders will have to be wary of crosswinds, especially on the open desert roads. This is where Lorena Wiebes took an emphatic victory ahead of her former lead-out rider Charlotte Kool in stage 2 of the inaugural UAE Tour Women last week. If the wind doesn’t break the bunch into echelons, this should be a showdown of the peloton’s finest sprinters.
Stage 2
Stage 2 gives the teams a chance to show off the work they put in during the winter with a team time trial on a flat, wide and simple parcours. The stage starts and finishes in Khalifa Port and the only technical parts come with two 180° turns. The average speeds should be very high and the leader’s jersey will almost certainly be moving away from the sprinters, as the best-equipped teams for a time trial will be those containing general classification contenders. The 17.3km course will give teams who are most adept at the discipline an opportunity to create big gaps before the first mountain stage.
Stage 3
The GC riders will either be pleased with the previous day’s performance or left wanting more, and the third stage from Umbrella Beach Al Fujairah to Jebel Jais gives them the chance to make amends. Jebel Jais is 19km in length but only has an average gradient of 5.6% which allows some heavier riders to stay with the pure climbers, with the steepest sections topping out at 9%. This has led to small group sprints at the top of the climb with the bonus seconds on the line becoming the most important gain. The…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…