The second day of racing at the 2024 UAE Tour makes a return to Al Hudayriyat Island for the individual time trial, last contested there three years ago. The stage 2 individual time trial takes place on Al Hudayriyat Island on a very fast 12.1km course. There is only one intermediate time check for the route, at kilometre 5.7.
The first rider down the ramp at 11:00 CET (14:00 local time) will be Elia Viviani (Ineos Grenadiers), with 138 more riders to follow. The final rider will be stage 1 winner Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep), wearing the leader’s jersey, taking the course at 13:18 CET (16:18 local time).
A favourite in the race against the clock is Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates), who was fourth in the discipline at last year’s World Championships. The reigning US national champion already has a GC win at Volta Valenciana, and he’ll get to showcase his stars-and-stripes jersey for the first time this year at the UAE Tour.
His last ITT competition in a stage race was last September when he finished second at Tour Luxembourg. He is among the early starters, the 11th rider to take the course.
Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) and Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike), like McNulty are both just 10 seconds off the race lead set by Monday’s winner Merlier, and could use the short course as a marker to stamp impressions for the GC. Yates, who finished third overall last year in the UAE, performed well on the 22.4km ITT at the 2023 Tour de France, riding to seventh. Kooij has tried to improve his individual performances, and was third in a 6.6km prologue at ZLM Tour last year.
While flat and using wide roads, it is not without technical points to keep riders alert, especially a pair of u-turns situated between a sweeping clockwise spiral. The first u-turn comes at kilometre 7.5, which leads to a swooping 1.7-mile, “S”-shaped portion of the course. At the end of the spiral is the second u-turn, which leaves a swooping and slightly uphill section of 2.9km to the line for the clock to stop.
Hudayriyat Island hosted the individual time trial in 2021, but on a different course. That year, Ineos’s Filippo Ganna won the 13km route by 14 seconds over Stefan Bissegger (EF Education).
Last year Soudal-QuickStep won the team time trial on stage 2 at Khalifa Port, with Remco Evenepoel riding along with Merlier, who had also won the opening stage.
