Blazin' Saddles: The two teams still without a win in 2018

The cry was deafening. A deep, guttural 'YES!' bellowed not once, nor twice, nor even three times – but on four crescendo'ing crazed occasions. The relief was palpable: an emotional Nathan Haas had finally got the monkey off his back.

Having described himself as a perennial race bridesmaid just 24 hours earlier, Haas beat the man who, in a previous incarnation now entirely divorced from his current polygamously pedalling self, had been left jilted at the aisle on more occasions than most.

Rounding Greg van Avermaet and Alexey Lutsenko on the home straight – two riders of the punchy uphill calibre Haas should be beating if he wants to issue more save-the-dates for his podium-topping antics – the Australian won stage 2 of the Tour of Oman.

"I don't want to look too silly with tears but I have to tell you, I have been working on a win for a while. I said I'm always the bridesmaid, so today I put on the wedding dress," Haas said, slumped on the pavement in Al Bustan, Muscat.

It was pocket-rocket Haas' first win since the Vuelta a Burgos in 2016 and his first win in the colours of Katusha-Alpecin. It was also his new team's first win of the season, following a frustrating week for fellow new boy Marcel Kittel in the Dubai Tour.

Kittel had struggled to hit his trademark heights in the sprints to the extent that Katusha's best chance of a victory came not from the German, but from his burly Austrian lead-out man Marco Haller, who took second place behind Elia Viviani in stage 5 last week.

Haas' triumph not only took the pressure of himself and Katusha, it also meant that just two WorldTour teams now remain without a win this term: Sunweb and UAE-Emirates.

For Sunweb, perhaps this is no huge surprise: the team's prized assets Tom Dumoulin, Michael Matthews and Wilco Kelderman have yet to turn a competitive pedal this year, while Sunweb have lacked a reliable sprinter since parting company with John Degenkolb in 2016 – by which point, it was debateable whether the German could still be categorised as either reliable or a sprinter.

Slow-building Phil Bauhaus was architect of a few flashes of promise Down Under, most notably finishing runner-up behind Viviani in Victor Harbor; Nikias Arndt top-tenned in the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race and the towering Max Walscheid took fifth in the Oman opener.

The wins for Sunweb will come – primarily through Dumoulin and Matthews, to be fair, although there are high hopes for Soren Kragh Anderson and new boy Edward Theuns, formerly of Trek-Segafredo – so it's not quite panic stations yet.

Far more worrying is UAE-Emirates's paltry return thus far – especially given the location of the current races: on 'home' sand in Dubai and now in neighbouring Oman.

Rui Costa – for whom the epithet 'former world champion' hangs like a noose around the neck - finished second behind BMC's van Avermaet in stage 3 of the Tour of Oman on Thursday, moments after new signing Dan Martin finished fourth in a leading five-man group in stage 2 of the Volta ao Algarve, won by Team Sky's Michal Kwiatkowski.

Like Kittel – the man who replaced him at Katusha – Kristoff has yet to hit the ground running at his new team so far. Filling up his European champion's jersey with a fair bit of off-season timber, the Norwegian looks the shadow of the rider that won Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders and stages on the Tour de France. Instead of topping podiums, the 30-year-old has made fourth and seventh place his own this season, at both the Dubai Tour and in Oman.

And yet, and yet… it's only one month since the opening stage of the Tour Down Under got under way – and where better for UAE-Emirates to end their barren run than at the Abu Dhabi Tour the week after next. After all, it will be the first WorldTour race since the season curtain-raisers in Australia.

What's more, things can change fast. A week or so ago, the highlight (and arguably lowlight) of Team Sky's season was news that an under-fire Chris Froome was free to race the Ruta del Sol.

But then Egan Bernal won the Colombia Oro y Paz on the weekend before Kwiatkowski and Wout Poels both notched wins in a matter of hours on Thursday, with Geraint Thomas also snaring a yellow jersey in the Algarve – all quicker than you can say, 'Shouldn't Sky take the moral high-ground and refuse to race Froome while the investigation into his AAF is still going on?'.

And look at Astana: Luis Leon Sanchez delivered the Kazakh team their first win of the season in Murcia last week before the in-form Magnus Cort Nielsen (who has only once finished outside the top 10 this season) sprinted to victory in stage 4 in Oman. Astana have otherwise finished on the podium in 13 other races in the past month. Not bad for a team apparently losing its identity…

Victories on Friday for Cort and, in the Algarve, Sacha Modolo of EF-Education First means three teams are just above Sunweb and UAE-Emirates with one single win this season: Katusha-Alpecin (Haas), Bahrain Merida (Sonny Colbrelli's excellent scalp on the Hatta Dam in Dubai) and Dimension Data (Mark Cavendish's victory in stage 3 of the Dubai Tour).

At the other end of the spectrum, Quick-Step Floors lead the way with 10 victories this season (largely thanks to sprinters Viviani and Fernando Gaviria) with Mitchelton-Scott closely behind with eight wins (including the overall TDU and Herald Sun Tour titles for Daryl Impey and Esteban Chaves).

Of the big-name sprinters, only Kittel and Kristoff and are still pedalling squares – with the likes of Cavendish, Gaviria, Viviani, Cort, Degenkolb, Andre Greipel (Lotto Soudal), Caleb Ewan (Mitchelton-Scott), Dylan Groenewegen (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) all tasting (albeit varying levels of) success.

Heck, even stuttering Bryan Coquard (Vital Concept) has opened his account in Oman – although fellow Frenchmen Arnaud Demare (FDJ) and Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis) are still knocking on the door.

So, what does this say? Well, nothing really. We always knew that the physically imposing Kittel was psychologically brittle and would need time to bed in at Katusha-Alpecin; we always knew that Kristoff was past his best and far from being a pure sprinter; and we've known for a while that while Sunweb's squad is rather threadbare, they should still keep some balls in the air through Dumoulin, Matthews and Kelderman, even if they will miss Warren Barguil's combativity.

Early season wins do no end of good for the morale but they're not the be all and end all. Judge Sunweb after the classics and the Giro, but the pressure will be on UAE-Team Emirates while they're racing in the Persian Gulf. Should Costa miss out on Green Mountain on Saturday and Kristoff disappear on Sunday's final sprint (or, for that matter, Martin miss out on the Algarve), it will be make or break at the Abu Dhabi Tour next month.

Would Astana ever miss out on winning a stage on the Tour of Kazakhstan? Pigs might fly...