This was the year that has ended at UAE Team Emirates, a path taken by many for the triumph of a few who, with their performance, speak for a huge collective that has cycled halfway around the world to be a little better every day..
From the third stage of the UAE Tour to the Giro di Lombardia, the first and last success, it has been almost eight months of competition halfway around the world in which the UAE Team Emirates wore the skin that created Gobik to the top of 32 victories, a statistic that sounds cold at first glance, but is based on hours of sleeplessness, work, demand and nonconformity for this path shared by UAE Team Emirates and UAE Team Emirates. Gobika road with the desire to improve at every step and to know that, no matter how high you have flown, the finish line has not yet been crossed.
At the home race
It was the same Tadej Pogačar who opened the account in the home race, in the UAE Tour, for the team. The obligation to look good as host, to close the circle, made the way clear to the Slovenian who joined the general the queen stage. In March, without leaving the country, Yousif Mirza became UAE national champion. First he did it in the long-distance, a few days later he repeated against the clock, as Ryan Gibbons would do in the South African national.
In the aforementioned Marchtook place one of the best races in recent memory. In the midst of the cold and the storm, Tadej Pogačar picked up the trident that takes the winner of the Tirreno-Adriatico. after a week of passion in the middle of Italy.
The first monument
Tadej Pogačar continued to make arguments to explain its value in a month of April month of April. He supported the leadership of his teammate Brandon McNulty in the Itzuliaand had the guts to be the best on the hard finish to Ermualde, beating his compatriot Primoz Roglic.
On a roll, Tadej Pogačar culminated his "unfinished business" in the Liège-Bastogne-Liègewinning in a sprint to five ahead of world champion Julian Alaphilippe. Pogačar continued to make history, big, big, capital, bringing down walls that even for top-level sprinters seemed impossible to surmount, carrying the image of Gobik to the best podiums in the world.
Shine in the big three
The sharing of successes within the team has been one of the great virtues that motivates and motivates all the members of the team. In the Giro d'Italia, Joe Dombrowski won a stage in a haul that could have been greater with the recovery of Diego Ulissi, excellent in the final week, and victorious in a stage of a Tour of Slovenia that would end up in Pogačar's bag, winner at the end of the year of four stage tours.
And the fact is that the Slovenian would hit the bull's eye in the Tour from start to finish, dominating all terrains and scoring legendary stages. Winner of the opening time trial, Pogačar would add a day in the Pyrenees. For him, the year would end in Lombardy and his Giro, the second monument of the year.
Diego Ulissi would compete in headlines with Tadej in the Tour being the winner of a stage and the overall of Semana Ciclistica Italiana in a very fruitful summer for UAE Team Emirates, which was an almost daily protagonist of the Vuelta a España, where Rafal Majka achieved a stage win after a memorable breakaway.
Triumphs of speed
The final stretch of the campaign spoke of the potential of UAE Team Emirates' sprinters. and that for next year it has been improved. In the Vuelta a Burgos, Juan Sebastián Molano took two stages, the same as in the Giro de Sicilia.
Alexander Kristoff, one of the structure's historic riders, won his last victory with the jersey UAE Team Emirates in the Tour of Germany.Marc Hirschi would open his account with the team in the Tour of Luxembourg and Matteo Trentin in the Matteotti Trophy. Fernando Gaviria would find consolation in the Tour of Poland, returning to the winning path that had been so difficult for him in the last period.
In total 32 victories that put UAE Team Emirates among the best in the world's most powerful cycling, a journey across half the globe full of successes, among more than ten cyclists and many countries.
A journey that in 2022 will continue...
TextsThe notebook of Joan Seguidor
Photos: UAE Team Emirates
