Elia Viviani (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) secured victory on the fifth stage as Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) maintained his overall lead at the UAE Tour.
The Italian champion timed his sprint for the line to perfection as he emerged victorious in a tight finish to what had been a relatively uneventful 181 kilometres route from Sharjah to Khor Fakkan.
Deceuninck-Quick-Step gave him the ideal train from which to launch a victory push with around two kilometres to go and he crossed the line ahead of Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates) and Marcel Kittel (Katusha-Alpecin).
“I think with the best sprinters in the world, the hardest thing is to wait. I don’t know who finished second and third but it was a chaotic finish,” Viviani said.
“For sure I’m really proud of myself and my team because it’s never easy after a successful season like last year and you see Fernando [Gaviria] is no longer our teammate. My lead-out train worked really well and we were thinking about our tactics in the last few days because after the first stage, we wanted to win. As always, the team did a fantastic job, thanks to my teammates.”
Friday’s stage 6 will determine the winner of the seven-day race as the 180km route from Ajman to Jebel Jais will culminate with a 20.7km climb.
You can rewatch Stage 5 from UAE Tour HERE.
UAE Tour 2019 – stage 5 results (Flag Island – Khor Fakkan):
| 1 | Elia Viviani (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) | 4:48:59 |
| 2 | Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates) | ,, |
| 3 | Marcel Kittel (Katusha-Alpecin) | ,, |
| 4 | Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe) | ,, |
| 5 | Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg (Dimension Data) | ,, |
| 6 | Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain-Merida) | ,, |
| 7 | Kristoffer Halvorsen (Team Sky) | ,, |
| 8 | Jakub Mareczko (CCC) | ,, |
| 9 | Cees Bol (Team Sunweb) | ,, |
| 10 | Maximilian Walscheid (Team Sunweb) | ,, |
UAE Tour 2019 – general classification after stage 5:
| 1 | Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) | 18:54:09 |
| 2 | Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) | +21” |
| 3 | David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) | +38” |
| 4 | Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-hansgrohe) | +46” |
| 5 | Wilco Kelderman (Team Sunweb) | +54” |
| 6 | Daniel Martin (UAE Team Emirates) | +01’01” |
| 7 | Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) | +01’04” |
| 8 | Victor De La Parte (CCC) | +01’12” |
| 9 | James Knox (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) | +01’14” |
| 10 | Davide Formolo (Bora-hansgrohe) | +01’15” |
