There aren’t many races you would normally count Tadej Pogačar out of winning. Potentially Paris-Roubaix, but that is yet to be seen. You’d ordinarily rule out a bunch sprint too - the world champion has a fast finish, but is not a sprinter. That did not stop him on stage one of the UAE Tour on Monday, however, when at the end of his first day of racing of the year, the three-time Tour de France champion tried to battle against specialists like Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and the day’s winner, Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek).
Pogačar is not a conventional GC rider, and it probably helps that the race is in the UAE, sponsors of his UAE Team Emirates XRG squad, but seeing him at the front of a sprint is far from usual. Even more interestingly, the Slovenian was not the only non-sprinter to be up there, with last year’s winner Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto), Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL) and Thomas Gloag (Visma-Lease a Bike) all present inside the top 11 on what was labelled as a flat stage.
