UAE Tour 2026 Stage 2

February 17, 2026 With Isaac del Toro taking bonus seconds in his win on day one, other GC riders will need to take every opportunity to chip away at their deficit. Stage 2 offers that chance with a 12.2KM ITT on Al Hudayriyat Island. The course could not be more flat but there are two U-turns on course so the riders will have to keep their head up. An intermediate time check after 5.5KM will give us insight into who is going well and who needs to push on. Last year, Josh Tarling won with a time of 12 minutes 55 seconds at an eye watering average speed of 56.671KM/HR. Tarling is back this year but he will have stiff competition in the current Olympic and World ITT Champion Remco Evenepoel. Teams were allowed to organize their riders' start times instead of by GC times so nearly all of the big names decided to go off early. Rémi Cavagna of Groupama-FDJ United was the first man off the ramp and set a time that would be good enough for third fastest at the end of the day. Fourth to start was Remco Evenepoel. He set the fastest intermediate time with a 6:24 and crossed the line at 13:03, 11 seconds faster than Cavagna. The other man that would challenge Evenepoel would be Josh Tarling of Ineos. At the intermediate check, Tarling clocked a time of 6:28, 4 seconds down on Evenepoel but the Brit was not able to accelerate in the second half and finished the day 5 seconds behind for a solid second place. Other than Evenepoel, other notable GC performances were from Antonio Tiberi at 33 seconds, Derek Gee-West at 34 seconds, Harold Tejada at 38 seconds, Stephan De Bod at 39 seconds and Isaac del Toro and Ben O'Connor at 41 seconds. Overall contenders who struggled include Felix Gall, Lennert Van Eetvelt, Adam Yates, Eddie Dunbar, Harold Martín López, and Nairo Quintana who all finished more than 55 seconds behind. Evenepoel now leads the GC and will wear the Red Leader's jersey going into tomorrow's first summit finish.