Wild wins Ladies Tour of Qatar opening stage

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The Ladies Tour of Qatar can sometimes seem a simple race. Ninety riders compete in the desert for three hours and at the end, Kirsten Wild (Hitec Products) always wins the sprint.

That’s not strictly true, of course, but there was certainly a familiar ring to the opening stage of the 2016 event as Wild overpowered Annalisa Cucinotta (Alé-Cipollini) and Lizzie Williams (Orica-AIS) in the finishing sprint at Qatar University to claim the first gold jersey of the race.

Wild’s running tally of stage wins in Qatar over the years now stands at 10 out of a possible 18. Only once has she failed to finish a stage in the top six (for the record, she was 19th on the opening stage in 2010) and Wild has, of course, claimed overall victory on four occasions.

“It’s not easy. Maybe it looks easy but it’s really hard racing. My heart rate was over 200 bpm in the sprint,” Wild insisted after descending from the podium on Tuesday. “My team helped me really and that makes it easier of course.”

Wild’s victory places her back in the gold jersey of race leader and will also serve, she hopes, as something of an augury for October’s World Championship road race in Qatar, given that Tuesday’s stage doubled as the Worlds test event.

The peloton tackled the initial loop of 80 kilometres of desert roads that will feature on the Worlds course, and then raced one lap of the 15-kilometre finishing circuit on the artificial island of the Pearl, before coming back off the course for the final seven-kilometre run-in to the finish.

The relative absence of wind made for a low-key opening hour of racing, which was run off at 38.6kph and failed to produce so much as a single successful breakaway attempt. The pace picked up, however, on the approach to the opening intermediate sprint at Rawdat Al Ajouz, and a crash in the peloton would briefly break up the race.

Wild duly claimed the honours in the sprint, ahead of Hosking and Marta Tagliaferro (Alé-Cipollini) and the Dutchwoman was happy for the peloton to regroup shortly afterwards, given that a number of her Hitec Products teammates had been held up in the incident.

Pearl

The speed picked up as the peloton turned back towards Doha and the finishing circuit of the Worlds, but the bunch remained effectively intact until it reached the Pearl, where Chloe McConville (Orica-AIS) launched a solo attack that would be snuffed out soon afterwards.

The sinuous nature of the Pearl circuit contributed to an understandable degree of caution in the peloton, and the spectacle may well have been enhanced had the riders been able to tackle multiple laps as the men will do at next week’s Tour of Qatar.

The second intermediate sprint, on the very finish line of October’s Worlds, was keenly contested, however, with Chantal Blaak (Boels Dolmans) beating Hosking and Tagliaferro in the hunt for bonus seconds.

Hosking, in particular, may well have paid a price for her efforts in that sprint, which came inside the final ten kilometres of racing. The Australian, second overall a year ago, has been widely-tipped as the rider most likely to deny Wild the spoils in Qatar this week, but she had to settle for 17th in the bunch finish.

“It was really chaotic. I’d used a lot of energy in that second intermediate sprint and that was only nine kilometres from the finish,” Hosking admitted. “But hopefully it will be better in the next couple of days.”

Wild, by contrast, had opted out of the second intermediate sprint, preferring to keep her powder dry for the finale. “I decided that if I was in a position to get seconds easily, I’d go for it, but if I wasn’t in a good position I’d let it go,” she explained afterwards. “I wasn’t in the very best position so I said I’d save my energy for the final sprint.”

The long, long finishing straight at Qatar University proved perfectly-suited to Wild’s powerful brand of sprinting, and she was ultimately a comfortable winner ahead of Cucinotta, Williams, Blaak and Shelley Olds (Cylance).

Though there are more trying days yet to come – the race ought to split in the crosswinds on stage 3 to Madinat Al Shamal – there was a sense that Wild has placed a sizeable down payment on a fifth overall victory thanks to her haul of bonus seconds.

Wild leads Cucinotta by seven seconds on general classification, while Williams and Hosking trail her by nine seconds. Hosking was frank in her appraisal of the situation. “It’s not terrible,” she said. “It’s not how I’d liked to have started either, but we’ll work on it from here.”

Wild, meanwhile, was adamant that nothing was ever decided on the opening day of the Ladies Tour of Qatar. After all, she bounced back from that 19th place finish on the corresponding stage six years ago to claim final overall victory

“Of course it’s a good start but the finish is far off and there are still three stages to go,” Wild said. “But this is a nice start and we’re really happy with the jersey. We’ll see.”

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