Viviani wins tight finish
khor fakkan — It was a tight finish between Elia Viviani, Fernando Gaviria, Marcel Kittel and Sam Bennett, who crossed the line in that order at the end of a strongly contested bunch gallop in Khor Fakkan.
Primoz Roglic retained the red jersey for the fifth consecutive day. The Slovenian is the hot favorite to win the inaugural UAE Tour ahead of Friday’s decisive stage to Jebel Jais.
“I asked my team-mates to do a proper lead-out. Michael Morkov did an amazing job,” said stage winner Viviani at the post-race press conference.
“When I saw all those top sprinters in one line, I thought my spot is on the right side of the road. I’m very proud of winning this sprint. After I lost it on stage 2, the boys wanted to demonstrate that we can beat anyone. We can’t always win but today our tactic was for a short and fast lead-out and it worked well at the end,” the Italian added.
“After the successful season I had last year and Fernando [Gaviria] not being our teammate anymore, it’s great to still win because he’s the world’s best sprinter and the hardest to beat,” pointed out Vivani.
“So I’m glad we did it as a team today after losing stage 2 to him. My lead-out train worked really well in this chaotic finish. We took the right decision to not spend more energy than needed yesterday and focus exclusively on today.”
Meanwhile Primoz Roglic, who has red jersey, said: “All stages here are new to me. It’s my first time everywhere and it’ll be my first time [at Jebel Jais] tomorrow. But we’ve showed with the team that we’re ready try to defend the jersey again. We can be confident. Looking at the start list, there are very strong riders in contention, but we don’t need to attack or do something on the climb.”
“As expected, it was a long day in the saddle but I didn’t really get bored because we always had to be attentive in the desert with the crosswinds. Again, our team did a great job, who protected my [leading] time. For sure, we’re ready for tomorrow’s decisive stage,” Roglic added.
UAE Team Emirates’ fast man Fernando Gavira narrowly missed out on his second win of the week, after being beaten to the line in an electric bunch sprint finish by Italian National Champion, Elia Viviani.
After a chaotic run into the final 1km of the race, Alexander Kristoff skilfully guided Gaviria to the front off the pack and began his explosive lead out. With just under 250m to go Gaviria burst off Kristoff ’s wheel and surged ahead with a powerful sprint, followed closely by Elia Viviani (Deceuninck Quick Step), Marcel Kittel (Katusha Alpecin) and Sam Bennet (BORA Hansgrohe). After the four sprinters crossed the line it required a photo finish to decide the race order, with Viviani winning and Kittel coming in marginally behind Gaviria.
Tomorrow UAE Team Emirates heads back into the hills for the second climbers stage of the tour. The 180km Stage six takes the peloton from Ajman over to the country’s highest peak – Jebel Jais – where the riders will face a gruelling 20km climb with a 6% gradient all the way to the finish line which sits 1,458m above sea level.