Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) won stage 2 of the UAE Tour Women, defending her red leader's jersey on a messy sprint finale.
After a flat 145km stage through the emirate of Dubai, the Dutch sprinter distanced Chiara Consonni (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) and Nienke Veenhoven (Visma-Lease a Bike) to the line at the Mohammed Bin Hamdan Smart University.
A breakaway of four riders formed early on the stage and built an advantage of up to seven minutes before SD Worx-Protime and UAE Team ADQ took up the chase.
The break was caught with 29km to go, and everybody got ready for a bunch sprint. A crash just before the penultimate turn with 1.2km to go reduced the peloton, and Franziska Koch (FDJ United-Suez) tried to anticipate the sprinters with a late attack. But Barbara Guarischi (SD Worx-Protime) piloted Wiebes perfectly to the front where Wiebes launched her sprint to win once again.
"Today I was actually scared in the final. It was a big chaos, so at first, I was not sure if I would be able to sprint," said Wiebes.
"It doesn’t happen often that I lose Barbara as the last lead-out, but today it happened a couple of times. Because we went so slow in the last 20km, everybody was full gas in the last five kilometres, and we went from the big road to the small road, and there was a lot going on."
But even in a chaotic final and with less-than-ideal positioning, Wiebes still came to the front when it mattered.
"We aimed for the corner on 1.2km to go, but we were totally not in position there, and then also not in position going into the corner on the last 600 metres," she added, after an eighth stage victory at the UAE Tour.
"But I keep on trusting Barbara in that case, and that was the most important thing, that we stay together. At the end, we came to the front. I started my sprint early, but it was enough."
How it unfolded
With low wind speeds, the chance of echelons was practically non-existent even though much of the stage criss-crossed the desert south of Dubai instead of winding through the cityscape.
Early on, Magdalene Lind (Hitec Products-Fluid Control), Petra Stiasny (Human Powered Health), Sara Luccon (Top Girls Fassa Bortolo) and Sonia Rossetti (Vini Fantini-BePink) formed a break of four that contested the first intermediate sprint, won by Luccon.
They were more than seven minutes ahead with 104km to go when SD Worx-Protime slowly but steadily began to reduce the gap, and when Rossetti won the second intermediate sprint at the Al Qudra Lakes, 62.8km from the line, the four escapees were only 3:50 minutes ahead.
Luccon and Rossetti both collected 13 intermediate sprint points, but Luccon will wear the black intermediate sprint jersey on stage 3 due to her better GC position.
With 38km to go, this had come down to only one minute, and the chasing peloton held back so they wouldn’t reel in the breakaway too early and invite new attacks. 30 km from the finish, Marlen Reusser (Movistar) made use of this lull to launch an attack together with her teammate Aude Biannic, but they were quickly brought back.
A counterattack from Vittoria Guazzini (FDJ United-Suez) went nowhere, but the high pace spelled the end for the breakaway that was caught with 29km to go.
A crash took down Femke Markus (SD Worx-Protime), Monica Trinca Colonel (Liv AlUla Jayco), and Lauretta Hanson (Lidl-Trek), but like Alex Manly (AG Insurance-Soudal) and Carys Lloyd (Movistar) who had crashed earlier on the stage, they could all finish the stage.
In the run-in to the finish, the wide, four-to-six-lane road enabled almost all teams to line their sprint trains up next to each other and crank up the pace.
Just before the right-hand turn onto the narrower road with 1.2km to go, a touch of wheels between Alison Jackson (St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93) and Charlotte Kool (Fenix-Premier Tech) brought down the Canadian champion as well as Reusser, Scarlett Souren (VolkerWessels), Imra Siri, and Marta Pavesi (both Top Girls Fassa Bortolo), splitting the peloton.
FDJ United-Suez led the race onto the final kilometre, after after the turn onto the finishing straight, Koch launched an attack to take advantage of the confusion in a bid for the stage win.
The German champion had a gap, but Guarischi expertly brought her sprinter back to the front, and Wiebes launched her sprint at the 200-metre mark, passing Koch and crossing the line with two fingers in the air to signify her second consecutive stage victory.
Results
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