UAE Tour: Mathias Vacek wins stage 6 from the breakaway

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Mathias Vacek won stage six of the UAE Tour after the peloton failed to bring back the day’s breakaway by just 15 seconds.

The nineteen-year-old was one of three Gazprom-RusVelo in a six-man breakaway, and proved quickest in the sprint, where he beat Paul Lapeira (Ag2r Citroen) with his teammate Dmitry Strakhov third.

Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Fenix) won the bunch sprint ahead of Dylan Groenewegen (BikeExchange-Jayco) for sixth place 15 seconds behind Vacek, with Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) nestled safely in the group to defend his overall lead before Saturday’s decisive Jebel Hafeet mountain finish.  

As a nineteen-year-old second-year professional, previously without a senior win to his name, this was a huge moment in the career of Vacek. The Czech rider had an expression of disbelief as he celebrated with his Gazprom-RusVelo teammates after the line, and the result still hadn’t appeared to sink in when he spoke post-race.

“I still can’t believe it, it’s amazing. I'm still really young, nineteen-years-old, and this victory means so so much for me. So I still can’t believe it!” he said.

“I thought: today I will try to get into the breakaway, and see how it goes. I just wanted to have the black jersey [for the sprinters classification] for [teammate, Dmitry] Strakhov. At 100km we only have one minute but we pushed really hard, really really hard. And in the end I won the sprint. Unbelievable!”

“At 10km from the finish we still had 1:15, so at that moment I was focused 100% on the sprint and to take the stage win.”

Given the simplicity of the 180km stage route around the suburbs and skyscrapers of Dubai, which featured no climbs, with no cross winds, the sprinters’ teams will be kicking themselves at failing to bring back the break and missing out on a sprint win. 

They appeared to have the break well under control for most of the day, with the deficit being brought back to under two minutes early on and remaining at little over one minute. But after reaching the 10km to go mark with a lead of 1:15, the momentum swung in favour of the breakaway. 

The six men out front stubbornly refused to give up, and conceded only a handful of seconds each kilometre. By the time they reached 5km to go with a lead still of a minute, it became clear that the sprinters had lost their chance, and that the stage winner would instead come from the break.

With strength in numbers the pressure was now on Gazprom-RusVelo to make the most of the situation and deliver victory, especially when Jonathan Canaveral (Bardiani-CSF-Faizane) dropped back to give them a numerical advantage of three against two.

Kochetkov was the man who led the break into the final kilometre and led out the sprint and both Vacek and Strakhov made a sprint. 

Asked at the finish whether he had been chosen by the team to sprint in the finale, Vacek revealed that their tactics were far less planned out.

“We didn’t have any tactics, we just wanted to go to the finish. We tried everybody to sprint, and I had the best sprint. Thanks also to the other guys from the team,” he said.

How it unfolded

The penultimate stage of the UAE Tour offered one last chance for the sprinters to win a stage prior to Saturday’s mountain top finish finale at Jebel Hafeet.

With calm conditions, little wind, and a more urban route heading out and back from the Expo site in Dubai that avoided the exposed desert roads of some of the previous stages, there was little to bother the riders protecting high positionson GC.

Six riders escaped up the road at the start of the day: Paul Lapeira (Ag2r Citroen), Johnatan Canaveral and Alessandro Tonelli (both Bardiani-CSF-Faizane), plus the Gazprom-RusVelo trio of Mathias Vacek, Pavel Kochetkov and Dmitry Strakhov. 

The Gazprom RusVelo riders were tasked with defending Strakhov’s black jersey as leader of the intermediate sprints classification, and the Russian managed to extend his lead by winning the first of the day’s two intermediate sprints. Strakhov also managed to win the second intermediate sprint at the Atlantic hotel, 43km from the finish, against little resistance from the others in the group. 

By this point the peloton’s deficit to the breakaway was little over one minute, having reached a maximum of nearly five minutes earlier in the day.

There was clearly no rush in the peloton to make the catch, and the gap still remained over a minute as the final ten kilometres approached. Canaveral dropped out of the break and back into the peloton, but the collective strength and cohesion of the five remaining riders left the peloton struggling to bring them back. 

Teams including QuickStep-AlphaVinyl, Jumbo-Visma, Bora-Hansgrohe and Ineos Grenadiers eventually worked together at the front of the peloton, but it was too little too late, and the minute they still had to bring back in the final five kilometre proved too great. 

To make matters worse, there was also a crash inside the bunch in the final kilometre. None of the main GC contenders appeared to be affected, however, meaning the fight for overall victory will be decided on the climactic stage at Jebel Hafeet.

Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) still leads Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) by four seconds, with bigger overall threat Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe) third at 14 seconds.