NED CAN SEE THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TOURS OF DUBAI AND ABU DHABI

Ihave spent a fair amount of time in the desert over the last couple of years. I’ve not been there for any form of spiritual retreat, or messianic isolation. Mostly, I’ve been sitting in an aluminium shed, watching a small telly as a bunch of professional riders chat to each other while they trundle up a 10-lane motorway in a straight line, before turning around a roundabout and trundling back again. You can call this a waste of time if you wish. I call it commentating on the Tours of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

It’s easy to mock, and it’s important, occasionally, to mock. After all, with their limitless funds and overbearing pretension, these races do rather over-egg their own selfimportance, especially when you consider the almost total lack of people in the United Arab Emirates who seem interested in watching them. The races tend to make disproportionate claims on their own behalf, filling their brochures with hilariously badly translated hyperbole. For example, the trophy for the winner of the Abu Dhabi Tour is called the Golden Grit, which sounds like rhyming slang. It is, according to the accompanying promotional bumph, to be won by an athlete who displays the greatest grit; a word which ‘means bravery but also sand.’ I’m still chuckling about that particular bit of nonsense.

Yes, the days can be a little soporific at times, by which I mean stultifyingly dull. In fact, so lacklustre was the race at one point on the Abu Dhabi Tour this year, that during the middle three hours of stage five, we were treated to the sight of a train of camels, strung out single file, trotting along beside the road on which the peloton was travelling. There were, Rob Hayles and I noticed, small gaps appearing in their line. “He’s lost the hoof,” Rob declared, prompting me to cut both our microphones for a threeminute attack of the giggles.

Nevertheless, these events have every right to exist, and they now occupy a clearly-defined place in the cycling calendar. They look different from any other race, for one. The desert, as well as Dubai’s absurdly overdeveloped skyline, form an astonishing backdrop. In the case of the wilderness, one which has the potential to form the race. Barely an edition passes without a vicious sandstorm blasting the peloton, instantly blowing the race into half a dozen diagonal, creeping constituent parts. They present an opportunity to measure the early season form of the best sprinters in the world: no race on the calendar, other than the Tour de France, will boast a startlist as replete with sprinting talent as the Tours of the Emirates. They have become a playground for the fast men, and, in Dubai’s case offer the sprinters the rare chance to take the overall victory in a stage race.

Abu Dhabi offered something different this year. Three sprinter’s stages, all of which were raced under the threatening shadow of echelons. But then they also added a short Individual Time Trial, along with the now traditional climb of the Jebel Hafeet mountain, a rocky edifice that rises vertiginously from the desert, flaunting its stratified formations as if to say, ‘You want geology? This is geology!’

As a result, we were treated to a warm-weather, five-day mini Grand Tour. It had a bit of everything, and because it didn’t have too much of anything, the general classification was only really settled in the final sprint for the line atop the mountain.

It’s taken the cycling purists a few years to accept that these races have their place, because they’re neither Belgian, nor over cobbles, but these excursions into the Middle East have found their niche, albeit a formulaic and unthreatening one. The cycling calendar is a wonderful mix, as it drifts through geography, climates and styles. But each month is a little different from the last, which makes it an infinitely more varied and complex proposition than, say, football. There’s a time and place for everything, and besides, I suspect that the money these lucrative showcases bring to the sport is going a long way to keeping it alive. So, the next time a camel offers you a tow, get on the hoof, and stay on the hoof, and see where it takes you. You might find it unexpectedly amusing.

We were treated to a warm-weather, five-day mini Grand Tour