Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) won an explosive second stage of the 2025 UAE Tour Women ahead of Lily Williams (Human Powered Health) and Lara Gillespie (UAE Team ADQ), on a day blown apart by crosswinds.
Wiebes, Gillespie and Williams were part of a five-woman group that also included Elisa Longo Borghini and another of her UAE Team ADQ teammates, Karlijn Swinkels, who together spent all day out in front, forming an echelon within the first few kilometres of the start and holding off the peloton.
Most of the GC favourites were in a chasing peloton that arrived 1:26 behind, reduced to a mere 30 or so riders.
Wiebes might retain the leader's jersey thanks to a second successive stage win, but with a mountain top finish in store tomorrow, Borghini is now in pole position to win the overall classification.
The three UAE Team ADQ riders were happy not to attack Wiebes at any point and instead continued to ride hard all the way up to the finale in order to gain as much time for Longo Borghini as possible on GC.
Having gained a gap instantly, the leading five spent the following 30 or so kilometres dangled just ahead of the peloton. Eventually, as the road turned into a headwind stretch, the peloton eased off, and the lead ballooned up, reaching in excess of three minutes at its highest point.
As the race swung back onto exposed roads about 60km from the finish, the chase began again in earnest in the peloton, and the gap began to come down rapidly.
It looked as though the quintet might be in danger of being caught after all, until around 30km from the finish, when the gap stabilised at about one minute.
Wiebes was less worried about what time they were gaining, and more about winning the stage. Ultimately, her alert move to latch onto the group at the very start of the day just as a gap was about to open helped secure her victory.
"I didn’t expect that," she reflected at the finish, "especially as for a long time the peloton was really close to us. I think I was one of the last ones who could jump over to this group at the beginning. In the headwind part, we got a minute, and we kept on going. For me, it was lucky that UAE [Team ADQ] had three riders in the group, so they kept on going for Elisa [Borghini]. It was easy for me to sprint."
By the time the five arrived on the finishing straight, another stage victory at Al Mirfa, where she also triumphed at the 2023 edition, seemed inevitable for her.
"As a sprinter, you are never 100% sure. But I remembered this sprint from two years ago, I knew from what position I needed to enter the corner, and I had space to go on my own line, so then I felt confident."
It was a frantic, tiring day racing along the fast, flat desert roads, with an average speed of 48.4km per hour.
"I felt it was really fast. That’s the thing that I knew from the chasing group behind, that it was hard to chase us back, as they could not go much faster than we did."
There will be another flat stage on Sunday’s stage four finale, which Wiebes has her eye on. "I hope this time, it will also happen on the final stage, because the final stage I’ve never won."
But in terms of the GC, everything will likely be decided on tomorrow’s mountaintop finish at Jebel Hafeet. It’s going to be hard for anyone to stop Longo Borghini, now that she has gained so much time on all of her rivals.
As for the likes of Ashleigh Moolman (AG Insurance-Soudal) and Mavi García (Liv AlUla Jayco), who arrived in a group behind the main peloton, their hopes of winning the GC are now surely over.
How it unfolded
With the wind blowing strongly, the riders almost sprinted out of the neutralised zone at the beginning of this 111km trek through the desert, from Al Dhafra Fort to Al Mirfa.
Wiebes, Borghini, Swinkels, Gillespie and Williams pulled clear within the first few kilometres, igniting a breathless chase between themselves and the peloton.
Their lead remained steady at over a handful of seconds, very clearly in the sight of the peloton on the long straight roads. As the wind continued to blow, the peloton split into various groups, with two large groups forming behind the main peloton.
With 98km to go the first trailing group rejoined the peloton, and 8km later the other trailing group also managed to rejoin.
At this point the quintet ahead still had a lead of less than 30 seconds, but the coming together of the groups behind, and a change of direction into a headwind, seemed to take the wind out of the sails of the chase. By the 60km to go point, it had grown to over three minutes.
Amid all this action, a nasty crash saw Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) and Cristina Tonetti (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi) hit the deck. It initially looked as though Tonetti was going to abandon as she made her way gingerly to the ambulance, but she managed to remount after all.
A change of direction at 60km to go saw the pace increase again in the peloton, and it began to split again. With 50km remaining, only around 50 riders were left, and the gap down to 2:30. About a dozen more riders dropped away following another acceleration around 40km to go, with the gap to the leaders down to under two minutes, and a few more fell away a few kilometres later.
The gap continued to fall until it was down to one minute, but at this point the impetus went out of the chase and it stabilised. The final kilometres actually saw the leaders gain some time, making absolutely sure that they would contest for the stage win.
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