Abu Dhabi: Italian Elia Viviani got the better of new world champion Peter Sagan after a wheel-to-wheel sprint to clinch the 129km second stage of the Abu Dhabi Tour here on Friday.
The Team Sky rider timed his sprint to perfection, coming around Sagan of Tinkoff-Saxo to finish comfortably in front in a time of 3hrs 2min 7sec. Italian Fabio Sabatini of Etixx Quick-Step, despite losing his lead rider Tom Boonen in a crash after the 70km mark, took the onus on himself and showed he had the legs to finish third.
Viviani’s triumph allowed him to take the red jersey for the overall lead from the shoulders of Astana’s Andrea Guardini. The Italian, who won stage one at Madinat Zayed, is now second with the same time as Viviani and Sagan is third, four seconds behind.
V“I’m riding strongly in this final part of the season and the support from my team has been excellent,” Viviani said. “Yesterday [Thursday], the team worked all day, but I lost position on the final corner and I had to make up too much ground to make the top three.
“Today [Friday] we decided to do no work and to leave me two teammates for the lead-out
“About 1km from the finish I had to make a big effort to get on Sagan’s wheel. On the final corner, [Andrea] Palini and another rider moved on the inside, but I did not like the look of it and held back. Sagan went and I knew I had to wait, but not too long because he is so strong.
“But sprinting is my job and I managed to get past him. I am delighted to have taken another win,” added a delighted Viviani, who has won seven stages this season, including one at the Dubai Tour early in the season.
Slovakian Sagan, who took over the white jersey for being the best young rider, said: “Earlier Viviani was my teammate so I’m happy for him. Everybody is doing their own tricks. He’s good. Elia is very good, he’s won very good races.”
The stage was marred by two crashes — one after the 42km mark involving Michael Schwarmann of Bora-Argon 18 and Lian Paton of Team Wiggins, and then at 70km that saw Tom Boonen and Theo Bos go down in an incident involving around half a dozen riders. Most quickly got back on their bikes and resumed the race, but Boonen and Bos were unable to continue.
There was trouble for the stage one winner of the black jersey — for intermediate sprint classification — Paul Voss of Bora-Argon 18. He was disqualified for behaving incorrectly towards a rival at Friday’s first intermediate sprint.
Soufiane Haddi of Skydive Dubai won the first intermediate sprint at Yas Marina Circuit ahead of Maxim Belkov of Team Katusha and Alessandro Bazzana of UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling.
The second intermediate sprint after 91.3km at Emirates Palace was bagged by Bazzana, with teammate Federico Zurlo second and Haddi third.
As the peloton approached the final 10 kilometres, the breakaway pack was led by Anton Vorobyev of Katusha and Rafaa Chtioui of Skydive Dubai, who was in a similar position on stage one. They were caught with 2.5km to go.
All the top teams started to set up their lead riders and it was Viviani who made sure Sagan would have to wait at least another day to get his first stage win in the rainbow colours.
Saturday’s 142km Al Ain stage is expected to decide the General Classification.
