Plain desert
Dubai doesn’t do things by halves. It goes big. The city is home to the world’s tallest building, the largest flower garden, largest indoor theme park and the largest array of manmade islands, and, in the five years since the Dubai Tour launched, the race has also attracted the biggest sprinters in cycling, too.
For riders like Mark Cavendish and Marcel Kittel, who have both chosen almost exclusively to start their seasons here every year since 2014, and who were among the big names on this year’s startlist, the desert plains of the Emirati state are the perfect place to dust off the cobwebs, ease into racing and oil up their leadout trains. The weather is warm but not scorching, the roads are flat (aside from the Hatta Dam finish), the occasional crosswinds get their legs going and there is a bunch finish on four of the five days. Significantly this winter, following a series of transfers - Kittel to Katusha, Alexander Kristoff to UAE Emirates and Elia Viviani to Quick-Step Floors and all of whom were in the Middle East - the race also acted as a testing ground for them to try out their new lead-outs.
On paper, the result looks exciting. Four different riders won the five stages – Dylan Groenewegen, Viviani, Cavendish and Sonny Colbrelli, which is the biggest spread of winners the race has ever had, while the battle for the overall victory – eventually claimed by Viviani – came down to the final day. But in reality, for almost the entirety of each stage, nothing much happened, as the riders left the Dubai skyscrapers for dust and headed into the desert on a 180km jaunt waiting for a bunch finish.
The sprints themselves were also chaotic and messy - Cavendish and Kittel both sat up at different points to avoid the charge of wheels that came in almost every direction.
Stage 4, ending on the short, sharp climb to Hatta Dam is usually where the race is won or lost, but the big names were almost upstaged by 19-year-old Brandon McNulty of Rally Cycling. His solo attack was extinguished in sight of the line. The young American, the sole survivor of the day’s breakaway, looked like he was going to make it to the line until he hit the final ramp and came almost entirely to a halt with 150m left. Instead, Colbrelli took the spoils on the line, with Viviani underlining his race lead. The Italian held onto the overall win after the final stage. The race had its winner but something big was still missing.