UAE Tour 2025 Stage 3

February 19, 2025 It's the first of two hockey stick stages in the UAE Tour for this season. The route takes the riders South for a big flat loop before coming back towards the start at Ras al Khaimah. Instead of heading back to the coast, the route cuts inland to take on the 19KM, 5.6% climb of Jebel Jais. The break went right away and was comprised of Federico Biagini, Lorenzo Conforti, and Manuele Tarozzi of VF Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè, and Đorđe Đurić, and Carlos Samudio of Solution Tech-Vini Fantini. Samudio and Tarozzi started the day locked on 11 points each in the Intermediate Sprints Black Jersey competition. The first Intermediate Sprint came with 114.5KM to go but Tarozzi was not going to risk a head to head sprint with Samudio. Tarozzi attacked with over 2KM to go before the sprint. Đurić pulled it back for his teammate. Tarozzi attacked again, this time Đurić tagged on but did not bring the rest of the group with him. Đurić beat Tarozzi in the sprint but Samudio was stuck behind and had to settle for third across the line which gave Tarozzi the virtual ownership of the Black Jersey. After the Intermediate Sprint, the route turned back North into a cross-tail wind which livened up the bunch. The gap came down to 45 seconds with 104KM to go but the peloton calmed down and the race proceeded to amble on. With 55KM to go, the mountain range emerged from the haze but there was plenty of pedaling to do before the road would go up. Cooperation within the lead group completely broke down with 50KM to go as their minds went to the second Intermediate Sprint. Samudio got away with Biagini at 45KM to go in a bid to get to the next Intermediate Sprint at 35KM from the finish. Biagini sat on while Tarozzi got clear behind which would require Samudio to win the sprint to take the jersey. Samudio did a great job and did indeed win the sprint to lead the Classification tomorrow. All of the racing up front extended the gap out to 3 minutes 20 seconds with 34KM to go but there was plenty of time to bring it back with the last 30KM all generally going up. UAE-XRG started the pace making at the bottom of the climb with 19KM to go and had the final riders from the break brought back just 1KM later. Mikkel Bjerg did a big shift of work, driving the pace until 6.8KM from the top but Domen Novak was next man up for UAE-XRG and the pace continued to ramp up. The group was still 40 riders when Novak pulled off 4KM from the line. Decathlon AG2R took over and really trimmed the group giving Felix Gall the opportunity to attack at 1.8KM from the line. Jay Vine of UAE-XRG wound Gall in and led the group of around 20 riders through the 1KM to go banner. Vine pulled to the right with 300M to go which unleashed Tadej Pogačar. Pogačar's turn of speed would not be matched and he had enough real estate to sit up and throw his hands in the air for his first victory of 2025. Oscar Onley of Picnic-PostNL was next across in second with Gall holding on for third. Pogačar will wear the Red GC leader's jersey tomorrow with a gap of 18 seconds back to Josh Tarling who did an incredible job defending his lead.