UAE Tour 2025 Stage 1

February 17, 2025 There is something for everyone in this edition of the UAE Tour between flat sprints, an Individual Time Trial, mountain finishes and a difficult uphill sprint which we have today. At 138KM, Stage 1 is a gentle introduction for a number of riders who are starting their season at the UAE Tour. The route heads due South out from the Shams Solar Power Station towards the Liwa Cycle Circuit. They will do two laps of the circuit before going onto the dragging uphill sprint finish in front of Liwa Palace. The wind direction was East to West which could produce echelons if gusts were to pick up. The start was a bit subdued with the prospect of forging through the wind on dead straight roads was not particularly appealing but Carlos Samudio of Team Solution Tech-Vini Fantini, and Federico Biagini and Manuele Tarozzi of VF Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè got up the road nonetheless. Their lead extended to 3 minutes but Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier of Lidl-Trek and Ayco Bastiaens of Soudal Quickstep were working in the peloton and had them pegged at 2 minutes by the time they entered the Liwa Cycle Circuit with 64.5KM to go. The two laps of the Cycle Circuit were generally uneventful but the speed did pick up and Tarozzi was the last of the break caught with 11KM to go. The last corner at 1200M didn't cause any trouble because there was plenty of room for anyone sitting back to move up. Tudor Pro Cycling kept the pace high through 1KM to go as the road started to rise over 5%. It was waiting game until 300M to go when Tadej Pogačar of UAE-XRG hit the front. Jonathan Milan of Lidl-Trek was sitting on Pogačar until 175M when Aaron Gate of XDS-Astana came up to Milan's left and Jasper Philipsen of Alpecin-Deceuninck was on his right. Milan started his sprint and passed Pogačar who had started way too early. Gate ran out of legs with 75M to go and Philipsen completely blew with 20M to go and had to stop pedaling. Milan took the win with an impressive display of power. He held over 1,000 watts for the last 45 seconds. The race jury relagated Philipsen for a move from right to left in the last 50M. It did not seem to be dangerous and did not affect the result. Nonetheless, Finn Fisher-Black of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe moved into second on the day which moved Tobias Lund Andresen of Picnic-PostNL into third place.