Why was Pogačar sprinting on stage one of the UAE Tour?

There aren’t many races you would normally count Tadej Pogačar out of winning. Potentially Paris-Roubaix, but that is yet to be seen. You’d ordinarily rule out a bunch sprint too - the world champion has a fast finish, but is not a sprinter. That did not stop him on stage one of the UAE Tour on Monday, however, when at the end of his first day of racing of the year, the three-time Tour de France champion tried to battle against specialists like Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and the day’s winner, Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek).

Pogačar is not a conventional GC rider, and it probably helps that the race is in the UAE, sponsors of his UAE Team Emirates XRG squad, but seeing him at the front of a sprint is far from usual. Even more interestingly, the Slovenian was not the only non-sprinter to be up there, with last year’s winner Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto), Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL) and Thomas Gloag (Visma-Lease a Bike) all present inside the top 11 on what was labelled as a flat stage.

The flat-ish profile hid a hard finish, which explains why it was quite so selective; perhaps Milan was more impressive in winning a tough bunch sprint than Pogačar was notable for opening up the whole thing.

It turned out, however, that the reason why the world champion was so near the front was not just because he is Pogačar, the rider prone to crowd-pleasing displays of dominance, but because he was supposed to be acting as a leadout for his teammate Juan Sebastián Molano. The Colombian crashed, so was not at the front, but Pogačar essentially stuck to the plan, and - in doing so - provided a leadout for everyone else after the chaos. He would have witnessed the incident, even touching wheels with Molano as he went down, so could have chosen to drop back. But perhaps, as so often, the Tour-winner-turned-leadout-man was just having a bit of fun on his first day this year.

Milan ended up in the perfect position and used his strength to hold off Philipsen, who was later relegated for deviating from his line, Finn Fisher-Black (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), and Tobias Lund Andresen (Picnic PostNL).

“We were a bit unlucky with Sebas [Molano] crashing, and it didn’t go as planned in the end in the final,” Pogačar said post-race. “But otherwise, we had good legs, we tried and it was a nice race.

“It looked like I was still stuck in my leadout idea because I went so early in the wind! If Molano wasn’t unlucky, I think it would have been something super beautiful.”

With the opening stage complete, the first real test for Pogačar and his GC rivals will be a time trial on Tuesday.

“I am looking forward to tomorrow, it’s going to be the first real long effort of the season,” he said. “The feeling is ok, there was a lot of work done in the winter and I hope it pays off tomorrow in the time trial.