Wiebes extends UAE Tour win record with dominant sprint on stage 1

Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) sprinted to victory on the opening stage of the UAE Tour at Madinat Zayed ahead of Lara Gillespie (UAE Team ADQ) and Zoe Bäckstedt (Canyon//Sram Zondacrypto). 

Wiebes was the pre-stage favourite and the Dutch champion bided her time with a headwind finish, but once the sprint was launched, the result was never in doubt. The Dutch champion won by several bike lengths to take her 119th professional road victory. 

It’s deja vu for Wiebes, who has now kicked off her WorldTour season with a win at the UAE Tour for the third consecutive season, and it adds to her victory in January at the Al Salam Championship in Dubai.

It’s also the seventh stage victory at the UAE Tour Women for Wiebes, extending what is a race record, with Charlotte Kool (Fenix-Premier Tech) and Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ), both with two victories each, being the only other riders to have also won multiple stages in the Middle Eastern stage race.

A three-rider breakaway featuring Gaia Segato (Vini Fantini-BePink), Nina Berton (EF Education-Oatly), and Monica Castagna (Top Girls Fassa Bortolo), but the trio’s advantage never grew significantly, and they were caught with 85km remaining.

After that, Elisa De Vallier (Top Girls Fassa Bortolo) and Andrea Casagranda (Vini Fantini-BePink) formed the next move with 74km and built a more significant advantage of over 1:00. The duo would be caught with 55km remaining.

There were a couple of separate crashes inside the final 30km, featuring Katrine Aalerud (Uno-X Mobility), Noä Jansen (Liv Alula Jayco) and Anneke Dijkstra (VolkerWessels).

With 10km to go, Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon//Sram Zondacrypto) was in the convoy but quickly rejoined the peloton.

Inside 3km to go, UAE Team ADQ and SD Worx Protime were well positioned towards the front, and with 2km to go, Fenix-Premier Tech also charged towards the front on the right hand side of the road. 

The defending champion Longo Borghini was also involved in riding on the front inside the final 2km. Inside the flamme rouge, Wiebes bided her time with the headwind finish and didn’t panic about potentially being boxed in. 

When the opportunity arose the Dutch champion darted towards the finish line and had plenty of space to celebrate victory.

Wiebes will wear the red jersey on stage 2 as the leader of the general classification, on the second of three consecutive stages that are set to end in a bunch sprint.