Elisa Longo Borghini wins UAE Tour Women Jebel Hafeet mountain finish

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Trek-Segafredo put on a show of strength on the Jebel Hafeet climb finish at the UAE Tour Women, with Elisa Longo Borghini and Gaia Realini dropping all their rivals on the 11-kilometre climb. 

Esmée Peperkamp (Team DSM) was the last rider to lose contact with the Trek-

Trek-Segafredo put on a show of strength on the Jebel Hafeet climb finish at the UAE Tour Women, with Elisa Longo Borghini and Gaia Realini dropping all their rivals on the 11-kilometre climb. 

Esmée Peperkamp (Team DSM) was the last rider to lose contact with the Trek-Segafredo duo 5.2 km from the finish, and Realini then lead them most of the way to the finish before Longo Borghini took over in the last 1500 metres.

The two teammates crossed the line holding hands in celebration, with Longo Borghini just ahead to take the stage win and become the new overall race leader. 

Expected contender Marta Cavalli was distanced in the cross winds before the Jebel Hafeet climb and her FDJ-Suez team were unable to bring her back to the front of the race. She finished 4:21 down on Longo Borghini.

“This is the way you always dream to win, together with your teammate. I owe a lot to Gaia Realini, she was the most valuable player of the day for me," Longo Borghini said, thanking her teammate profusely. 

"She was just incredible, setting a hard pace, and all of a sudden, we were alone. We were like: 'Okay, we just need to go this pace together and celebrate together. I wanted her to win the stage but then we did some time calculations and the team decided I should win the stage.'” 

In the general classification, Longo Borghini is now seven seconds ahead of Realini and the GC played the decisive role in who of the two would win the stage. 

Silvia Persico (UAE Team ADQ) crossed the line in third place 1:11 after surging away from Peperkamp. Longo Borghini now leads Realini by seven seconds, with Persico up to third at 1:18. 

“We wanted her to win the stage and me to get second and the jersey, but then we did some calculations, and the team director decided to do it this way. I have to say a big thank you to Gaia and to everyone in the team,” Longo Borghini explained.

How it unfolded

Starting in Al Ain, the 107-kilometre stage criss-crossed the eponymous oasis, then ventured out into the desert before returning to the outskirts of Al Ain for the climb up the Jebel Hafeet.

Lara Crestanello (BePink) and Iris Monticolo (Top Girls Fassa Bortolo) formed the early breakaway and were joined by Nina Kessler (Team Jayco-AlUla), Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka (Canyon-SRAM), and Giorgia Bariani (Top Girls Fassa Bortolo) after the first intermediate sprint. 

The peloton let them gain an advantage of more than two minutes but when Marta Cavalli and Grace Brown (FDJ-SUEZ), Pauliena Rooijakkers (Canyon-SRAM), Petra Stiasny (Fenix-Deceuninck) and several other riders lost contact in the cross winds after the feed zone with 60 km to go, the race was on.

While Cavalli’s teammates were called back to help, the peloton picked up the pace to make it harder for the dropped group to come back, with the breakaway also quickly reeled in. Trek-Segafredo and Team DSM were particularly active in the peloton, and Cavalli’s group was about 40 seconds behind for a long spell.

37 km from the finish, another group including Liane Lippert (Movistar Team), Julie Van de Velde (Fenix-Deceuninck), and Nadine Gill (Ceratizit-WNT) was dropped on a crosswind stretch, giving the peloton even more reason to push hard to eliminate another GC contender. The peloton eventually fractured into several groups.

At the intermediate sprint in Green Mubazzarah with 13.7 km to go, Lippert’s group was almost a minute behind while the Cavalli group had given up and was nearly three minutes adrift.

Once the Jebel Hafeet climb began, the peloton was quickly reduced to only 17 riders. Kristen Faulkner (Team Jayco-AlUla) led this group up the lower slopes while Lippert, Eider Merino (Laboral Kutxa Fundación Euskadi), and Van de Velde tried to come back from behind.

7.8 km from the finish, as Lippert had reduced the gap to 29 seconds, Realini started setting the pace in the group of favourites. One by one, the other riders cracked and had to ease up, the gap to Lippert quickly increased again.

With seven kilometres to go, only Longo Borghini, Soraya Paladin (Canyon-SRAM), Anna Shackley (Team SD Worx), Mikayla Harvey (UAE Team ADQ), Persico, and Peperkamp were left on Realini’s wheel as the young Italian climber confirmed the climbing skills she had shown in last year’s Giro Donne.  

Another kilometre up the climb, only Peperkamp was still hanging on to Realini and Longo Borghini, and then she was dropped with 5.2 km to go, leaving only the Trek-Segafredo duo in front.

Realini continued to set the pace and increase their advantage. Further back, Harvey, Persico, and Shackley caught up with Peperkamp, and Merino eventually bridged to this group as well, but the stage win was long gone.

Longo Borghini came to the front and shared the work in the final kilometre as they discussed who would win the stage. A first win for Realini would have been well deserved but Longo Borghini is Trek-Segafredo’s team leader.    

She was told to cross the line first to collect the biggest time bonus and so secure the leader’s jersey. However Longo Borghini and Realini celebrate a team victory together.