Lorena Wiebes wins emphatically to start 2025 season in style on stage 1 of UAE Tour
Cycling
European champion Lorena Wiebes has kicked off the 2025 UAE Tour in style, sprinting to a dominant win ahead of rival Charlotte Kool in a bunch sprint finale to stage 1. In the process, the Team SD Worx - Protime star takes early control of the leader's jersey.
Just three riders got themselves into the day's breakaway on stage 1. With the peloton relatively relaxed about the threat of the attackers, their advantage quickly rose over the eight minute mark. At around 85km to go though, the peloton finally woke up and began to chase in earnest. Despite a crash that eventually saw Letizia Paternoster forced to abandon, at 25km to go, the leaders had seen their advantage cut to just 1:42 over the peloton.
At 5km to go, the two remaining attackers - Cristina Tonetti and Sylvie Swinkels still had 12 seconds. Finally though, with 3km to go, the catch was completed by the peloton. From there, it was all about the bunch sprint and in the fight for the line, Lorena Wiebes led the race home ahead of Charlotte Kool and Nienke Veenhoven in third.
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- Funny that they shorten women’s races but have no qualms about letting U23 do the same distances.Jumpyjohn23-03-2025
- Why is that relevant when discussing speed?Mistermaumau23-03-2025
- But he wasn’t the only one ;-)Mistermaumau23-03-2025
- Obviously the questions are more important to some here than to them or the team so I suggest looking for answers instead of asking questions between ourselves. We’ll probably get them unless someone actually goes to ask the protagonists themselves. Here are some starters : They like riding together; they have their own rivalry that helps bring out the best in both; they might get more points helping each other compared to racing separate races. In any case, unless we hear MJ complaining about it, I don’t think it’s going to change, it’s the Sepp Kuss syndrome all over again, fans lobbying against the will of the rider.Mistermaumau23-03-2025
- Mine goes to MVDP for entertaining us all year round :-) Stellar race, Ganna impressive in his own way as many predicted after some oddly lacklustre times.Mistermaumau23-03-2025
- i remember when not too long ago mathieu was regarded as a real tactical knucklehead. i’m not sure that was ever quite accurate, but it’s certainly the case that over the years he has become a real master tactician. in the biggest races, van der poel rarely makes choices that don’t fully optimize every specific advantage he has.OCexile23-03-2025
- Whatever the result, I believe the strategy by UAE to launch Pogacar was absolutely the right one. Unfortunately, they just were not able to execute it the way they must have planned, being all over the place at the start of the Cipressa.Cooldude23-03-2025
- They are without doubt not just the best two classics riders of this generation, but amongst the best of all time. MvdP is more suited to MSR and PR (which Pog has yet to race), while Pog is now almost untouchable at LBL and Lombardia. RVV is the only one where both basically have an equal chance to win.Cooldude23-03-2025
- bravissima!
maria2024202423-03-2025 - According to Tadej's Strava upload, he went up the Cipressa at an average speed of 37.6kph. Rocket ship! He did the 5.63km verified 'Cipressa' Strava segment in 8:59 minutes, which has a 4.3% average grade and total elevation gain of 229m. Naturally, he got the Strava KOM.Pogboom23-03-2025