Jay Vine headed into the final stage of the 2024 UAE Tour as overall leader and looking good to add the race to his growing palmares. Sadly, a dramatic collapse on the mythical slopes of Jebel Hafeet spelt disaster for the Australian.
“It's just this stage normally without the crosswinds, you arrive with 1,500 calories burned, an easy day and just do a TT effort. Today, it was much much harder and I just don't have the legs at the moment,” he reflected post-stage to GCN. “When they first pushed on, that's when I felt it."
Vine eventually crossed the line in 32nd place on the day, slipping to outside the top-20 on GC as Lennert Van Eetvelt secured a thrilling overall victory. "Annoyingly if I'd probably had a slightly easier ride for maybe five/six minutes in the crosswinds, I might have been able to hang on until the steep section with 3km to go, but I still probably would have got dropped there anyway and maybe cramped," Vine assesses honestly. "I did the best I could, I'm really happy with my ride."
"With Jay, he was good but you know that when you are in the middle of the peloton, you feel good, but then you have the feeling when you start to climb," said a confused UAE Team Emirates sports director, Mauro Gianetti to GCN. "This is also the first race for Jay and probably he missed a lot of volume because he was also a long time without training in the winter because of an injury.”
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