Stage 2 of the UAE Tour Girls was held within the Al Dhafra Area, which makes up about of the nation’s space however may be very thinly inhabited and fairly removed from the city centres of Dubai, Al Ain, and Abu Dhabi, which host the opposite three phases.
The drive to the beginning in Al Mirfa took about 90 minutes, and so does the drive again from Madinat Zayed that we’re at the moment on. The solar remains to be shining brightly above the desert, however by the point we’re in Abu Dhabi, will probably be long gone sundown, and the sunshine has made method for nearly pitch-black darkness.
After we arrived in the beginning venue simply earlier than midday, there was a little bit of wind, although nothing just like the gusts on the pre-race press convention on Hudayriyat Island on Wednesday. And it regarded just like the wind course was a bit too northerly to be perfect for echelons. However hope dies final, proper?
Whereas strolling the crew parking zone, I used to be invited to experience alongside within the Cofidis automotive by the crew’s sports activities director, Arthur Quilliec – and that’s not one thing you say no to, least of all on a stage that may simply explode into echelons within the desert. So, after finishing my interviews in the beginning, I walked again to the French crew’s camp to satisfy up with Arthur and the crew mechanic Jérôme, my firm, for the following couple of hours.
Ready for the beginning, we discuss in regards to the venue – proper by the ocean and with varied facilities, the realm is nonetheless very empty, giving the texture of a recently-completed housing improvement that’s nonetheless ready for its residents to maneuver in. We do cross older and extra inhabited elements of Al Mirfa within the impartial zone, although, and locals have been wanting on outdoors their retailers and cafés as the ladies’s peloton made its method by way of.
The impartial zone ended up being a bit longer than deliberate as a result of a rider had punctured, and the race waited for her to return earlier than the flag was waved. The rider was chasing again on the bumper of her crew automotive that was going previous the convoy within the left lane at excessive velocity, inflicting Arthur to shake his head: “That’s so harmful! All you want is a automotive pulling left or braking all of the sudden, and you’ve got a extremely unhealthy crash. I wouldn’t do that, I would like my riders to remain alive,” he stated solely half-jokingly.
This was the primary of quite a lot of punctures all through the day. On occasion, the race radio would creak into motion, announce the crew in query and, if the mechanic was fortunate, whether or not it was the entrance or the rear wheel that wanted altering, prompting a mad sprint by the crew automotive to help their rider. The Cofidis riders have been spared any punctures, that means that Jérôme may take pleasure in considerably of a break in between getting the bikes prepared for the race and checking them for any faults after the stage.
Because the race trundled alongside the roads round Al Mirfa at a leisurely tempo, we settled right into a relaxed silence, ready for the flip to the south and into the open desert. Ultimately, a entrance echelon shaped within the tail-crosswind that included Lotte Kopecky, Lorena Wiebes, their SD Worx-Protime teammates Barbara Guarischi and Femke Markus in addition to Emma Norsgaard (Movistar Group), Loes Adegeest (FDJ-SUEZ), Rachele Barbieri, Pfeiffer Georgi (each Group dsm-firmenich PostNL), Wilma Olausson (Uno-X Mobility), Romy Kasper (Human Powered Well being) and riders from Liv-AlUla-Jayco and Group Coop-Repsol.
Behind all this, Morgane Coston (Cofidis) had been dropped from the peloton, making Arthur seize the crew radio transmitter and inform the remainder of the riders and provides Coston some encouragement.
Talking of crew radios: To me, the transmissions that reached us within the automotive sounded similar to the dad and mom in Peanuts clips, a stringing collectively of sounds reasonably than distinct phrases. It may possibly’t be straightforward to make your self clear if you find yourself making an attempt to maintain your place within the peloton and concurrently communicate right into a small microphone whereas making an attempt to defend it from the wind – however I assume in case you’re driving crew vehicles each week, you’ll finally get used to it and perceive what your riders are asking for.
When Kopecky punctured out of the lead group, the echelon motion was quickly over, and lots of riders could have breathed a sigh of reduction because the race then settled into a quick, however regular rhythm. There can be no extra echelons because the wind was now a tailwind for a lot of the remainder of the stage, other than the 11-kilometre ending straight (that’s not a typo).
Aside from Hannah Ludwig dropping again to the automotive to choose up bottles and ice socks – a decades-old however very purposeful contraption of an ice-cube-filled nylon sock with the opening tied collectively – it was an uneventful day, leaving room to look out of the window because the desert panorama handed by.
There have been some sand dunes, and the wind blew the sand throughout the highway, displaying that the stage may have been complete carnage if the wind course had been just a bit completely different, however the desert primarily consisted of compacted sand with bushes and brushes and the occasional small saltpan.
Extra conspicuous have been man-made objects like motorway bridges (the 2 hardest climbs of the day) or oil rigs (the Al Dhafra Area holds a lot of the UAE oil reserves), and {the electrical} energy strains that gave the impression to be in every single place. Or perhaps it simply felt that method as a result of there was nothing else, and so they have been seen from kilometres away. As we closed in on Madinat Zayed, we noticed two camps with camels, too.
The technical part by way of the desert city adopted by an out-and-back run, first south on the large highway out of city, then again north to the end line, made Arthur announce the assorted turns and roundabouts earlier than giving final directions to Valentine Fortin and her lead-out Martina Alzini in his calm and supportive method: “There’s a full-on headwind, you need to dash on the proper aspect. what to do, allez, allez!”
Because the race entered the ultimate kilometres, the Cofidis practice got here by way of to the entrance in the course of the highway and going into the final 500 metres, Alzini and Fortin have been positioned very effectively, however ultimately, Fortin acquired boxed in and completed in twelfth place.
Diverting off the race route, we acquired to the crew parking zone simply earlier than the riders arrived. After thanking Arthur and Jérôme for the experience, I moved again into my ‘common job’ of interviewing riders and sports activities administrators.
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Excellent write-up
Insightful piece
It seems like you are an authority on this subject—as if you wrote the book on it or something. Though I think you could clarify your arguments a bit more with some photos, other than that, this is a fantastic site and I will certainly be back.