The GC battle on the UAE Tour comes down to three stages. The 3rd stage is a flat individual time of 9 kilometres long before the first of two mountain finishes happens on the fourth day of action. Jebel Jais climbs for 20 kilometres with gradients hovering around 5%.
Jebel Jais was included twice in the UAE Tour, and on both occassions the climb was not hard enough to open up any significant time gaps. The winners on the climb were Primoz Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard, both finishing just a handful of seconds before most other GC contenders.
The finish climb on the last day, Jebel Hafeet, is a different story. This is a 10.8 kilometres climb at 6.6% with the section between kilometre 4 and 8 sloping at 8% to 9%. In 2020, Adam Yates attacked in this part of the climb and he finished roughly 1 minute ahead of his rivals.
It’s not always like that – last year, Tadej Pogacar outgunned Adam Yates on Jebel Hafeet in a two-up sprint – but chances are that the winner on Jebel Hafeet will also take the overall.
Three of the former winners of the UAE Tour are racing in the emirates, namely Pogacar and Yates.
Favourites UAE Tour 2022
*** Adam Yates, Tadej Pogacar, João Almeida
** Daniel Felipe Martínez, Sepp Kuss, Alexey Lutsenko, Wout Poels
* Iván Sosa, Alejandro Valverde, Jack Haig, Emanuel Buchmann, Sergio Higuita