The Cycling Disciple

Orica Scott's Caleb Ewan demonstrated he can out sprint the very best in the world as he won a very wet Abu Dhabi Tour stage four and Rui Costa stayed safe to win the overall classification. Credit: cyclingnews.com The young, diminutive Ewan showed that power output isn't the be all and end all, as he pulled away from large world class sprinters, such as Lotto Soudal's Andre Griepel and Quick-Step Floors' Marcel Kittel, to make up for his failure after a premature celebration on stage two. Meanwhile, UAE Team Emirates' Rui Costa managed to avoid trouble to secure his first stage race win since 2014 and give his new sponsors a victory in their only home race on the UCI WorldTour calendar, with Katusha-Alpecin's Ilnur Zakarin and Team Sunweb's Tom Dumoulin finishing second and third respectively. In the other classifications, Dimension Data's Mark Cavendish came out on top in the green jersey competition, Quick-Step Floors' Julian Alaphilippe w...

UAE Team Emirates' Rui Costa surged away from his rivals in the final kilometre to summit Jebel Hafeet on stage three and take control of the Abu Dhabi Tour overall lead. Credit: cyclingnews.com 2013 Road World Champion, Costa, impressively held off Katusha-Alpecin's Ilnur Zakarin to take a four second lead into the final stage and all but win his team's home race. Team Sunweb's Tom Dumoulin was only ten seconds behind in third while Trek Segafredo's Bauke Mollema and Quick-Step Floors' Julian Alaphilippe rounded out the top five, finishing fourth and fifth respectively, 28 and 46 seconds down. Movistar's Nairo Quintana and Trek Segafredo's Alberto Contador were clearly saving their efforts for another race as they finished tenth and 13th respectively. The Abu Dhabi Tour isn't well-known for its climbs - for good reason, it doesn't have very many - but stage three took a brief break from the sprinter friendly stages to deliver an ascent...

Quick-Step Floors' Marcel Kittel left it late to pip the already celebrating Caleb Ewan of Orica Scott to victory and the move up to second overall on stage two of the Abu Dhabi Tour. Credit: cyclingweekly.co.uk Kittel, who had to be paced back to the peloton after a puncture in the latter stages of the race, was keen to atone for his poor finish to stage one, and did so but not exactly emphatically. Ewan opened up his sprint very early but looked assured of victory until Kittel powered past the little Australian on the line, who had prematurely began celebrating. Dimension Data's Mark Cavendish retains the overall red jersey and green sprinters jersey, while Kittel moves to second, four seconds behind. Marco Canola, with two intermediate sprint wins on stage two, takes the black intermediate sprinters jersey and Ewan wears the white young riders jersey. Stage two - an entirely suburban 153 kilometre race round Abu Dhabi finishing at Al Marina in the far west of the c...

Dimension Data's Mark Cavendish looks to still be in top form as he sprinted to victory on Stage One of the 2017 Abu Dhabi Tour, as a crash once again raised the issue of disc brakes. Credit: roadcyclinguk.com Cavendish held off the likes of Lotto Soudal's Andre Griepel, Bahrain Merida's Niccolo Bonifazio and UAE Abu Dhabi's Simone Consonni to claim Stage One moments after a nasty crash resulted in Team Sky's Owain Doull's shoe being sliced through by a disc brake - refueling the argument whether or not they are too dangerous to be used in the pro peloton. 2017 sees the Abu Dhabi Tour become a WorldTour calendar event for the first time, and Stage One took a star studded peloton on a 189 kilometre out and back ride starting and finishing in Madinat Zayed - the largest region in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. A six man break formed promptly from the start, building a five minute advantage after the opening 57km and Manuele Mori of UAE Abu Dhabi taking eight ...

Quick-Step Floors' Marcel Kittel won Stage Five to retain his Dubai Tour title by out sprinting Team Sky's Elia Viviani and Astana's Riccardo Minali. Credit: cyclingweekly.co.uk After Stage Four was cancelled due to strong winds, Kittel would've had to have had some awful misfortune to not win his third stage of the week and with it his second Dubai Tour. Stage Five took the peloton on a loopy 120 kilometre tour of Dubai city centre. Such were the nature of the time gaps behind Kittel, no one could catch him on time bonuses alone, and therefore no break was attempted for the first hour of racing. Astana's Dmitriy Gruzdev and UAE Abu Dhabi's Matteo Bono decided to have a go with 80km to go, with BMC Racing's Florin Gerts and Bahrain Merida's Ivan Garcia Cortina bridging across soon after. The pace remained high all day, as the peloton weren't going to put the prospect of a sprint finish in jeopardy. 48 kmph was the average speed, meani...

Trek-Segafredo's John Degenkolb won the sprint to win Stage Three of the Dubai Tour but it was an incident involving Quick-Step Floors' Marcel Kittel that stole the headlines. Credit: cyclingnews.com Degenkolb pipped Dimension Data's Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg to the line in Al Aqah, but it appeared something had rubbed Astana's Andre Grivko up the wrong way during the crosswind hampered desert section of the race, as he had appeared to have struck Kittel, resulting in a gash just above the German's eye. Credit: mirror.co.uk Astana released a statement saying: "Astana Pro Team apologises to Marcel Kittel and Quick-Step Floors for improper behavior of it's rider Andre Grivko during Stage Three of Dubai Tour." Kittel wasn't going to accept the apology though, angrily replying: "I won't accept an apology for this. This has nothing to do with cycling. What Grivko did is a shame for our beautiful sport." Unlike the ...

Quick-Step Floors' Marcel Kittel picked up his second victory in two stages to keep himself top of the overall standings at the Dubai Tour. Credit: VeloNews.com Stage Two was going to be nothing troubling for a peloton that includes some of the world's best sprinters - a 186 kilometre meander from Dubai to the northern most Emirate in the UAE, Ras Al Khaimah - with just a 76 metre pimple of elevation on the otherwise pan flat course. It took a while for the eventual breakaway of the day to stick, with the group of Aqua Blue Sport's Mark Christian, Bardiani's Simone Andreetta, ONE Pro Cycling's Pete Williams, UAE Abu Dhabi's Yousif Mirza and Jempy Drucker of BMC Racing moving away after 18km. Drucker won the first intermediate sprint after a battle with Mirza, and after an hour of racing, the quintet had forged an advantage of four minutes over the peloton. The peloton were clearly in no mood to chase until strictly necessary, with the teams of Kittel a...