Tadej Pogacar secured the overall victory in the final stage of the UAE Tour with a solo win on the Jabel Hafeet mountain today.
The Slovenian rider attacked early on the 10km culminating climb to finish 33sec ahead on the day.
“I didn’t want to be surprised by a counterattack or anything. It was better to go at my own pace,” the Pogacar said.
Meanwhile, Giulio Ciccone of Lidl-Trek finished in second, taking second place in the overall classification, with Pello Bilbao of Bahrain rounding out the final podium.
Pogacar dominated the week-long race after coming third in Tuesday’s time trial, subsequently winning the first of two mountain stages on Wednesday.
Riding for the UAE Emirates Team, Pogacar picked up his 90th career victory, already looking ahead to his busy one-day classics campaign
“Now I won’t take part in any stage race until June, so I will switch my mind to one-day classics and I hope to do well there,” he said.
Elsewhere, Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) laid down a season marker in the stages that ended with bunch finishes with two wins and the overall points jersey ahead of Belgian Quick Step rider Tim Merlier, while Josh Tarling of Ineos had led the young rider standings since winning the stage two time trial but dropped down to 10th today with Movistar’s Ivan Romeo taking the white jersey.
Earlier, Alexey Lutsenko instigated the day’s breakaway, with the Kazakhstani rider joined out front by his teammate Pier-André Côté plus Bruno Armirail (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Ayco Bastiaens (Soudal-QuickStep), Logan Currie (Lotto), Enrico Zanoncello (VF Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizanè), and the Solution Tech-Vini Fantini trio of Dušan Rajović, Đorđe Đurić and Carlos Samudio.
From there, the peloton experienced several breaks before eventually reining the escapees with 50 km to go, with a group of about 40 riders amassing at the front.
It was UAE Team Emirates-XRG that led the way up, with Vermeersch and Herregodts pulling for their leader Pogacar, as the world champion accelerating clear with 7.6km to go.
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