UAE Tour – Velogames Preview

Now that everything has been confirmed and I have a free minute, I’m ready to bash out a few thoughts for tomorrow’s UAE Tour. This will be fairly brief as it’s a simple race and the main players should be pretty obvious. Hopefully this will help you out with any last minute team honing and maybe one-or-two suggestions amongst the cheaper riders.

The Route

Standard stuff for a UAE Tour route: four sprint stages that are almost entirely pan flat; two summit finishes, Jebel Jais on stage three is slightly easier than Jebel Hafeet on stage seven; and the kicker this year is a team time trial (TTT) instead of the individual time trial present in previous editions. Bear in mind that in last year’s race, one of the sprint stages went to the break, so filling your team with sprinters may not be the best idea. The sprinter field is absolutely stacked though and we should be in for a really competitive week’s racing.

The Riders

For the general classification (GC), the choice is pretty simple. Remco Evenepoel (28 credits) is the favourite, but in order to win, he’ll need to get past Mr UAE Tour himself, Adam Yates (22 credits). Yates has moved from Ineos to UAE for the 2023 season as is here to regain the crown from his new teammate Pogačar, who has consigned him to 2nd place for the last 2 years. I think we can expect a good showdown between the pair on the mountain finishes and both teams will be keen for a good performance in the team time trial to provide the foundation for victory.

Backing up the two main men are Jay Vine (22 credits) teammate of Adam Yates and winner of the only other world tour stage race so far this season. Another strong contender is Pello Bilbao (22 credits) who has started the season strongly and was 3rd here last year. My advice here would be to pick who you think will win the overall and then take a look at the sprinters and cheaper options to supplement your team.

Speaking of sprinters, there are a lot, and not all of them can finish on the podium each day. This early in the season, it’s hard to know which team has the most efficient lead out train or which sprinter has the best kick. So shop around and pick a selection. Arnaud Démare (12 credits) is the only one of the top level sprinters yet to start their 2023 season, so not much is known about his form. Dylan Groenewegen (14 credits), Tim Merlier (16 credits), Phil Bauhaus (12 credits), Sam Bennett (14 credits), Fernando Gaviria (12 credits), and Sam Welsford (12 credits) all have one win already in 2023, the latter being the only rider to have two stage wins. Caleb Ewan (16 credits), Mark Cavendish (14 credits), Olav Kooij (14 credits) and a few others will be hoping for better fortune when the race gets underway tomorrow. Other sprinters to consider are Viviani (8 credits), Thijssen (12 credits), Liepiņš (10 credits), and Marijn Van Den Berg (8 credits). Like I said, stacked sprint field, and your guess is as good as mine for who’ll pick up these stage wins.

Looking down the list, there aren’t a huge number of names that jump out for a race like this. Most of the points will probably go to the expensive riders, but there may be a few who’ll surprise. At 8 credits, there’s only one rider I can see other than the sprinters I mentioned who’ll maybe go well and that’s Ben Tulett. He could have a good time on the climbs and if Ineos do a decent TTT then he’ll be well placed for GC too. At 6 credits we have Jensen Plowright who may be sprinting for Alpecin in the absence of Jasper Philipsen. Harold Tejada is here for Astana, potentially supporting Lutsenko, but we was 8th on a summit finish in the recent Tour of Oman. The rest of the 6s and all of the 4s are the lead out riders and breakaway hopefuls. Pick whoever takes your fancy, because it’s a complete minefield. There could be some easy points to be had from teammates of GC favourites, but they won’t be many.

As always, the very best of luck to you all, and here’s the league code one more time for the last race in the Warm Up Championship – 986859730. The Spring classics start next week and hopefully the Superclasico Velogames competition with them. The season proper, is about to kick off!