Philipsen sprints to victory in UAE Tour opener

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Jasper Philipsen won stage one of the UAE Tour in a hotly contested bunch sprint. Riding his first race of the season, the Alpecin-Fenix rider took the win ahead of Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe) in second and Elia Viviani (Ineos Grenadiers) in third.

All three riders were spread across the road on a wide finishing straight, with little separating them. 

The hectic closing metres saw Philipsen manage to gently nudge Mark Cavendish (QuickStep-AlphaVinyl) off the wheel of UAE Team Emirates' Pascal Ackermann, and was able to follow and then go past the German once he kicked off the sprint. 

Dylan Groenewegen (BikeExchange-Jayco) looked like he might challenge him from the inside lane, but could not find a gap between Philipsen and the barriers. 

With that threat to his right out of contention, Philipsen only had to worry about Bennett and Viviani to his left. But despite being able to open their sprints a little later, Philipsen had the endurance to stay ahead of them and take the win.

"It was a pretty fast finish," said Philipsen after his win. "The last straight was more than 50 kilometres, so we could see the finish from very far out!

"The team did a really good job at staying calm. We had time and space to move, and then we made our way to the front."

Asked how confident he was that he would win, the Belgian replied "Not confident at all. It was the first race of the season, so you don't know how your shape is and how it compares with the other teams.

"I'm really looking forward to moving on and trying to repeat the same as we did today. It won't work out always, but it's good to win immediately and put the pressure off."

His win was especially impressive given the calibre of sprinters he beat. Not only did he outpace Bennett, Viviani, and Groenewegen in the drag race to the line, he also left behind the likes of Cavendish, Ackermann, and Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ).

"If you see the start list with all the sprinters, I think it's almost the top field of sprinters in the first World Tour race of the year. So I think we can be really proud of what we did, and just keep on going in the next days."

How it unfolded

On such flat roads in the desert, how this stage unfolded depended largely on whether or not the wind blew. As it happened, conditions were hot, with the temperature exceeding 30 degrees, with barely a breeze to cool down the riders. 

As a result, the peloton ambled along for most of the day with little in the way of wind to have an effect, as they waited for the inevitable bunch sprint. Neither was the route especially complicated, with the riders heading out and back southwards and then northwards from Madinat Zayed. 

A reasonably-sized five-man break went clear at the start of the day, consisting of two Gazprom-Rusvelo riders in Dmitry Strakhov and Pavel Kochetkov, two Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè riders in Luca Rastelli and Alessandro Tonelli, and Xandres Vervloesem (Lotto Soudal), the break’s sole WorldTour representative.

Vervloesem was one of just four riders who started the race for Lotto Soudal due to numerous cases of illness in the team, with Caleb Ewan among those to have withdrawn. 

The peloton were happy to let them go, and they built a modest lead that stabilised at around three minutes.

They stuck together until the day’s first intermediate sprint, where the Gazprom-Rusvelo and Bardiani-CSF-Faizanè duos did battle. Kochetkov tried to steal a march on the others by attacking them on the run-in to the sprint, only to be chased down by Rastelli. Gazprom still came out on top, however, with Strakhov outsprinting Tonelli ahead of Vervloesem in third. 

The gap quickly came down after the sprint, and by the time there was 68km left to ride — at which point the peloton were briefly given a red flag as a precaution against sandy roads — it was at 1:30.

Strakhov also won the second intermediate sprint, this time being led-out successfully by Kochetkov, whose pace turned out to be too much for Rastelli who was temporarily dropped prior to the sprint.

Strakhov punctured immediately after the sprint, and was soon swallowed up by the bunch, who remained just 1:30 adrift of the break.

By now the riders were on the long, straight road northwards back to the finish in Madinat Zayed, helped along by a tailwind. The break was soon visible up the road, and not wanting to make the catch too early, there was a relaxed atmosphere in the bunch, with riders idly chatting to each other.

Despite the calm environment in the peloton, Rick Zabel (Israel-Premier Tech) went down in the bunch 25 kilometres from the finish, though was able to gingerly remount and continue. 

Having continued to hover just ahead of the peloton, the break was eventually caught 19 kilometres from the finish. 

Still the pace remained slow in the peloton, as no team wanted to yet take it up ahead of the sprint finish.

At last the sprinters’ teams began to up the ante a little with 11 kilometres to go. QuickStep-AlphaVinyl, Ineos Grenadiers and Bahrain Victorious were the initial frontrunners, but still no single team strung the peloton out, which remained closely bunched together.

Several other trains began to compete for supremacy at the front with 5 kilometres to go, with Israel-Premier Tech taking control 2 kilometres from the line.

BikeExchange-Jayco then took control and were still at the front under the one kilometre to go banner.  Amid the flurry of lead-out men trying to set their sprinters up, it was Bora-Hansgrohe’s last man for Sam Bennett who emerged to the front, justifying the team’s risky ploy of staying near the back of the peloton a mere few kilometres before. 

But despite being well positioned, Bora-Hansgrohe’s Bennett didn’t quite have the speed to defeat Philipsen.