PREVIEW | UAE Tour 2025 stage 6 - Milan and Merlier have won, will Jasper Philipsen win final bunch sprint of the race?
Cycling
From February 17th to 23rd, the UAE Tour 2025 will take place. It is the second World Tour stage-race of the year and will feature plenty of stars in the field of the sprinters and also climbers - headlined by Tadej Pogacar. We preview stage 6.
Stage 6 will be taking place in Abu Dhabi, where the 2016 World Championships were hosted. The stage, designed once again for the sprinters, will be very calm certainly but the finale ultra-fast. The world's fastest riders will be taking glory once again.
The riders will have an impressive total of 176 climbing meters throughout the 166 kilometers, or in other terms, the climbing meters that are equivalent to an average hill anywhere in Europe. A very fast day through an urban environment means very high speeds, and with it comes tension.
However there won't be much fight for positioning, as the finale is not technical at all. The final corner comes with several kilometers to go, the finale at the Abu Dhabi Breakwater has some slight left and right-leaning bends but it will be all about timing the leadouts and launching the sprint at the right moment.
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The Weather
Some northern breeze, but on this day it won't make much of an impact. There will be a headwind sprint however, so timing will be crucial for the final effort - launch too early and in the final meters you will be overtaken, which means the best leadout may not have the typical advantage.
The Favourites
The stage 5 sprint highlighted exactly how chaotic the race can be towards the finale, because the pan-flat stages mean everyone arrives fresh at the finale. Focusing on a big leadout means you can lose position, and this has been made clear by Jayco's work - they've had leadout man Luka Mezgec in perfect position, but Groenewegen both times failed to take the wheel. Lidl-Trek have truly thrived in this complicated environment and I expect them to be able to deliver Milan again in front.
Jonathan Milan - Simone Consonni - Edward Theuns - Daan Hoole
Sam Welsford - Danny van Poppel - Ryan Mullen
Tim Merlier - Bert van Lerberghe - Casper Pedersen
Jasper Philipsen - Jonas Rickaert - Robbe Ghys
But this time around the headwind sprint can change things quite a lot. Today you saw how Merlier and Matteo Malucelli came out of Milan's wheel to fight for the win, and this scenario is enhanced on the arrival to Abu Dhabi. Starting a couple wheels behind can actually be beneficial in this arrival, so the likes of Merlier and Philipsen who do not have a leadout that can compete with the others, can certainly take the win.
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Dylan Groenewegen - Luka Mezgec - Max Walscheid - Elmar Reinders
Arvid de Kleijn - Maikel Ziljaard
Fernando Gaviria crashed today so it will be hard for the Colombian to have the confidence and speed to fight for the victory on this day, and these chaotic arrivals will have hit the confidence of some. Oded Kogut, Dan McLay and Phil Bauhaus certainly will have the same or even more confidence, but alongside Gaviria we can safely argue that Gerben Thijssen or Picnic PostNL duo Fabio Jakobsen and Tobias Lund Andresen won't be too happy.
Prediction UAE Tour 2025 stage 6:
*** Tim Merlier, Jonathan Milan, Jasper Philipsen
** Arvid de Kleijn, Sam Welsford
* Dylan Groenewegen, Matteo Malucelli, Oded Kogut, Dan McLay, Phil Bauhaus, Gerben Thijssen, Fabio Jakobsen
Pick: Jasper Philipsen.
How: Sprint out of Milan's wheel.
Original: Rúben Silva
The UAE Tour is now just days away, we sat down with some of the riders taking part to get their thoughts 💭 #UAETour @AbuDhabiSC@ihc__official@Mubadala@NakheelOfficial@aldar pic.twitter.com/m0S4ki4ob8
— UAE Tour Official (@uae_tour) February 13, 2025
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- Great commentCaralladas05-04-2025
- i’m such a sucker for those group-hug, happy ending moments between competitors, largely because it’s so WASN’T that way in my younger, stronger days. (on that note, i have this hope that somewhere down the road, maybe fifteen or twenty years, a middle aged wout and mathieu will go for a pleasure ride together in flanders, and reminisce about the days when they were the young, strong monsters that stalked the cobbles.)OCexile05-04-2025
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025
- That’s not quite true, even steep climbs and sudden gradient changes can be considered as remaining tangential to the wheel whereas the occasional dip between cobbles a wheel drops into cannot, as such riding over cobbles can become like a permanent surmounting of small obstacles that hit back into your wheel slowing you drastically if you don’t have the right rhythm to “fly” on the mounds, here again the greater the momentum the less these obstacles reduce your speed. But, it is but one factor, you cannot decide on this alone. Like with natural surface ripple formation on desert tracks used by vehicles, there is an optimal speed range to efficiently pass over such surfaces, too fast or slow and your car gets shaken to pieces from the “harmonics” in the vibrations caused. Pretty sure the same applies to riding on cobbles.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- I am saying I have an open mind at the moment for your cobbles theory but cannot agree with your wind statement (and by extrapolation sprinting since that implies speeds where wind is by far the limiting factor). Had you argued all things not being equal I could have agreed with you but if we thus assume 2 objets of the same size and speed but with differing weights, it is completely obvious that the lighter one will suffer faster in the wind. Extrapolate to the extreme, drop stuff off cliffs or just remember your momentum equations to verify. Now, obviously in real life we have to assume riders of different weights won’t have the same wind hitting surface but you cannot generalise at all then as you can have very unaerodynamic light riders and very aerodynamic heavy ones because it isn’t weight that defines CdA, Teslas have an incredible CdA and are ridiculously heavy, and someone like Harry Levreyssen is a Tesla in cycling.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- When Roglic beat Geraint Thomas on the last day's TT at the Giro, I remember just how unbelievably emotional his team was. One guy, I forget who, German rider I think, was interviewed and was nearly speechless with a really drawn out "fuuuuuuuuuck it's incredible" comment. And then something even more amazing happened. Geraint Thomas came through the ranks of the Jumbo Visma riders and congratulated them all. True, honest, sincere, sportsmanlike, and celebratory of what had been achieved. Here he was, getting second, and he meant it. And cycling these days is like that, as you say - the way Pogacar hugged Matthews in Quebec, the way Matthews congratulated Pogacar in Montreal, on and on they honor and respect each other. It's pretty great.RidesHills04-04-2025