The 2025 UAE Tour finale was shaped by echelons, with Tadej Pogačar dominating Jebel Hafeet to win the stage and seal his third overall victory in the race.
It was not the usual easy Jebel Hafeet (11 km, 6.76%) stage, as crosswinds, echelons, and crashes that took out Chris Froome, Niklas Behrens, and others. Tadej Pogačar along with other riders formed a strong breakaway group of 42 that rode all the way to the base of Jebel Hafeet. With strong climbers like Lennert van Eetvelt, Jay Vine, Einer Rubio, Felix Gall, and many others missing out on this move, their GC hopes were over as their rivals had a three-minute advantage before the hardest climb of the race. The lead group included Pogačar, Ciccone, Bilbao, Romeo, Castrillo, Onley, Fisher-Black, Lecerf, Konrad, Tejada, and Debruyne.
Pogačar had two Belgian rouleur teammates Rune Herregodts and Florian Vermeersch who set up his attack with 8 km to go on Jebel Hafeet. Ciccone, Onley and Fisher-Black tried to follow the strong move but soon lost the wheel of the world champion and wasted a lot of energy. Pogačar soloed to victory into a headwind, pushing 6.71 ᵉW/Kg for 26:53 min. It was 61 seconds slower than Adam Yates’ time in 2023 but performance-wise similar, except that this time there had been echelons before the climb. Evenepoel in the 2023 UAE Tour did 6.82 ᵉW/Kg for 26:02 min as he benefited from more drafting than Yates. In the 2021 edition Pogačar to win the stage needed to do 6.36 ᵉW/Kg for 26:03 min.
Ciccone finished second with 6.4 ᵉW/Kg, losing 33 seconds to Pogačar. Onley and Fisher-Black paid for reacting to Pogačar’s move, finishing 5th and 7th on the stage, with Bilbao and Romeo taking 3rd and 4th on both the stage and GC. Pogačar won his third UAE Tour GC without much competition, warming up before the European season.
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sometimes you report the w/kg at sea level, what they were in this case?
The mountain started at sea level, sea lvl power is often used for high mountains like galibier and so on where they start at 1000 m above sea level and end at 2600.
Pogacar did not push in the last 200 meters, lost around 15 sec to Ciccone. Even if we assume that Ciccone saved energy for the sprint due to Bilbao being there, I think Pogi still could’ve done it 8-10 seconds faster, putting him around the purple line.