Remco Evenepoel wins overall victory at the UAE Tour as Adam Yates finishes in first on Stage 7
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ByEurosport
Updated 26/02/2023 at 14:05 GMT
Remco Evenepoel has won the overall victory at the UAE Tour despite finishing second on the summit finish on Stage 7 at Jebel Hafeet. Luke Plapp (Ineos Grenadiers) came second overall after finishing 59 seconds behind Evenepoel, while Adam Yates’ stage win and his stage winner time bonus saw him leapfrog Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious) onto third on the podium.
Lucas Plapp of Australia and Team INEOS Grenadiers on second place, race winner Remco Evenepoel of Belgium and Team Soudal Quick-Step - Red Leader Jersey and Adam Yates of United Kingdom and UAE Team Emirates on third place pose on the podium ceremony
Image credit: Getty Images
Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) has sealed the overall victory at the UAE Tour after finishing ten seconds behind Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) on Stage 7.
Evenepoel has dropped with 3km remaining on the summit finish, but he kept Yates within his sight.
The world champion looked to close in on Yates in the final kilometre, but he had to settle for second and finished 10 seconds behind the 30-year-old.
Geoffrey Bouchard (AG2R Citroen) finished in third; 42 seconds behind Yates.
“It was hard. I thought Yates was just going to stay on my wheel and then jump in the last few hundred metres, I would have been happy with that,” Evenepoel said afterwards.
“But in the end, I had to go over the limit to keep up with him. I think I came closer towards the end but then my legs ran out of energy in the end because we went super fast on the climb.”
Mikkel Bjerg, Marc Soler and Brandon McNulty started quickly at the foot of the climb before Yates began to attack with around 6km remaining.
Evenepoel and Seb Kuss (Jumbo-Visma) followed and both raced ahead with Yates sitting behind the pair. Evenepoel got ahead of Kuss, but with 3km remaining Yates charged past the Belgian.
The pair pushed hard until the end with Yates' 16-second lead getting slowly reduced, but the Briton could hold on for the stage win.
Yates said: “The tactic was to go full gas at the bottom. We had nothing to lose.
“I was so far down on the GC after the crosswind stage, we just had to go all out from the bottom and see what happened.
"The guys did an amazing job. I attacked quite early, but I knew I had to push really hard to drop the guys, and finally I managed to do it.”
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