Dutchwoman takes first win with SD Worx ahead of DSM duo Kool and Georgi
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European champion Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx) won stage 2(Image credit: Tim de WaeleGetty Images)
Wiebes and Charlotte Kool sprint for the win on stage 2(Image credit: Tim de WaeleGetty Images)
SD Worx celebrate together after Wiebes' win(Image credit: Tim de WaeleGetty Images)
Wiebes is the new race leader heading into the final stage(Image credit: Tim de WaeleGetty Images)
Race leader Charlotte Kool (Team DSM) at the start(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Crosswinds broke up the peloton during the race through the desert(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Margot Pompanon (St Michel-Mavic-Auber93) on the ground after a crash(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
The peloton split into small groups due to the wind in the UAE desert(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Riders battle to get back to the groups up the road(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Echelons dotted up and down the desert highway(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
The race was split apart before coming together late on(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
European champion Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx) among those working at the front(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Sand is blown across the road by the high winds during stage 2(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) leads a small group of riders(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
A long day in the desert for the riders on stage 2(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx) sprinted to victory on stage 2 of the UAE Tour Women. The European champion launched from the wheel of Charlotte Kool (Team DSM) in the final 200 metres and beat Kool to the line, with Kool's lead-out Pfeiffer Georgi taking third place.
As the most recent stage winner, Wiebes is the new overall leader, lying at the same time as stage 1 winner Kool. Chiara Consonni (UAE Team ADQ) lies third overall at 10 seconds.
The stage was hit by high winds and dominated by echelon action right from the start, with a group of 19 minutes ahead of the rest of the peloton for a long time.
The peloton eventually caught up with 43km to go, and a trailing group finally returned at the 20km mark. However, in the last 10km, the race split again in the crosswinds, with Marta Cavalli (FDJ-Suez) among the riders losing ground in the GC battle.
"Today was a tough stage but we flow with the go. We showed again that we have a good lead-out. DSM was coming up from the left side, but Barbara [Guarischi, ed.] brought me into the perfect position, and I could sprint as I wanted," Wiebes recounted after the finish.
"It was really windy, and we started directly with crosswinds. We were four of our team in the first group. Then the group came back, and with the headwind, another group came back, so I think it was almost a full peloton again.
"But we also knew there would be some crosswinds in the final ten kilometres, so the girls did a really great job to protect me there also and then we set up the lead-out."
Following a hard day in the winds, 69 riders remain with a minute of Wiebes and the race lead ahead of the decisive stage 3 with its summit finish at Jebel Hafeet.
How it happened
Starting at Al Dhafra Castle, stage 2 covered 133 km through the Abu Dhabi desert. The first half of the stage went roughly from east to west before the course turned north towards the finish in Al Mirfa.
There was action from the start as Team DSM, SD Worx, and UAE Team ADQ put the race in the gutter in strong crosswinds, forcing echelons and forming a front group of 19 riders that gained up to two minutes on the biggest peloton, with a third group even further down the road.
The front group consisted of stage 1 winner Charlotte Kool (Team DSM) and her teammates Pfeiffer Georgi, Franziska Koch, and Daniek Hengeveld, Team SD Worx's Lorena Wiebes, Femke Markus, Barbara Guarischi.
Also along for the ride were Lonneke Uneken, Chiara Consonni, Marta Bastianelli, and Silvia Persico from UAE Team ADQ, Marjolein van't Geloof and Lily Williams from Human Powered Health, as well as Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo), Emma Norsgaard (Movistar Team), Audrey Cordon-Ragot (Zaaf Cycling Team), Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka (Canyon-Sram), Mylene de Zoete (Ceratizit-WNT), and Christina Schweinberger (Fenix-Deceuninck).
Persico suffered a mechanical but quickly returned to the front, and Skalniak-Sójka won the first intermediate sprint in Madinat Zayed to take the lead in the intermediate sprint classification. Longo Borghini was second to take two bonus seconds.
The second group slowly reduced the deficit with 75 km to go as an acceleration in the front group caused Cordon-Ragot, Persico, Consonni, Williams, Van't Geloof, De Zoete, Schweinberger, and Markus to lose contact. The chasing peloton eventually absorbed them, but the gap had gone back up to a minute.
With the front group down to only 11 riders, this gap slowly but surely went down, and the two groups joined up with 43 km to go, soon after the second intermediate sprint had been won by Bastianelli ahead of Skalniak-Sójka and Longo Borghini.
At this point, the last group, including a.o. GC contenders Cavalli and Kristen Faulkner (Jayco-AlUla) was over five minutes behind. But they kept chasing hard into a headwind while the pace in the peloton dropped and finally made contact with 20 km to go.
In the last ten kilometres, the wind picked up again and turned to a crosswind. SD Worx, Canyon-Sram, and Fenix-Deceuninck cranked up the pace and forced a split in the peloton; Cavalli who had just come back after a 100-kilometre chase was one of the riders that lost contact.
When Team DSM came to the front with a full lead-out train 1400 metres to go, Wiebes was briefly boxed in a bit. But Guarischi piloted her to the front and onto Kool's wheel. After a long, sweeping right-hand turn with 200 metres to go, both Kool and Wiebes started the sprint at the same time, and Wiebes had the higher speed, winning the stage a bike length ahead of her former teammate.
Lukas Knöfler started working in cycling communications in 2013 and has seen the inside of the scene from many angles. Having worked as press officer for teams and races and written for several online and print publications, he has been Cyclingnews’ Women’s WorldTour correspondent since 2018.
