A few years ago, the UAE built an artificial hill, Al Wathba, a regular feature of the UAE Tour. The selection of this country as host of the 2028 World Championships has led UAE to work on raising and making this mountain climb more challenging in order to toughen up the competition and benefit their flagship team leader, Tadej Pogacar.
After several years of World Championships with tough profiles, suitable only for accomplished climbers, sprinters were once again eager with the UAE’s selection as host for the 2028 event. However, all indications are that the UAE’s leaders want the victory in that edition to go to Tadej Pogacar, the UAE’s star rider, and to that end, they are modifying the initially planned circuit to make the only climb, the artificial hill of Al Wathba, more difficult.
According to Tim Merlier, this climb has been increasing in both length and gradient in recent years, and it is expected that by 2028, when the World Championships are held, it will become a grueling 3.8 km climb with an average gradient of 6.5%. Not content with making this climb more difficult, it has also been revealed that several artificial walls with gradients of up to 10% have appeared in recent months on the island of Hudayriyat, where the circuit will take place.
This has caused outrage among sprinters like the Belgian cyclist, who long for an opportunity to compete in a World Championship, something that hasn’t happened since the 2017 edition held in the Norwegian city of Bergen, where Peter Sagan raised his arms in victory for the third consecutive time in a close sprint against Alexandre Kristoff and Michael Matthews.
Voices like that of veteran Groupama-FDJ director Marc Madiot have also spoken out against this decision by the United Arab Emirates, taking a sharp jab at the UCI: “I don’t dare imagine the UCI accepting that we build an artificial mountain under the pretext of making the race more difficult, or even to give an advantage to a rider.”
The curious thing is that when the UCI awarded the World Championships to the UAE, the 2028 circuit was stipulated to be flat, seeking a change after so many years of challenging terrain. In fact, the UAE’s initial proposal was a finish at Jebel Hafeet, an option that was vetoed by cycling’s governing body.
Source: www.brujulabike.com