La Flèche Wallonne and the Vuelta Asturias next up for UAE Team Emirates-XRG

With hills aplenty across both races, UAE Team Emirates-XRG is pleased to confirm its lineups for both La Flèche Wallonne and the Vuelta Asturias. First up on Wednesday, 22 April will be La Flèche Wallonne, with its trademark finish atop the Mur de Huy, before the four-day Vuelta Asturias gets underway on Thursday, 23 April.

At La Flèche Wallonne, UAE Team Emirates-XRG returns to a race it has won on two occasions through Tadej Pogačar, and finished third with Diego Ulissi in 2019. This time out, the team will be led by Sports Directors Andrej Hauptman and Marco Marzano.

The pair will call on the services of Mikkel Bjerg, Benoît Cosnefroy, Luca Giaimi, Rune Herregodts, Vegard Stake Laengen, Pavel Sivakov and Tim Wellens. The latter continues his return to racing after De Brabantse Pijl and the Amstel Gold Race.

With the Belgian national champion’s jersey on his shoulders, Wellens was a winner of this year’s Clásica Jaén before his season got interrupted by a fractured collarbone. Six weeks on from his crash at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, the 34-year-old will hope to use Flèche Wallonne as another opportunity to sharpen his legs for the Emirati squad.

In both Cosnefroy and Sivakov, Wellens has two teammates more than capable of securing a good result on Wednesday afternoon. The former claimed third place at the Amstel Gold Race on Sunday, and can be confident of taking these strong legs into Wednesday’s uphill finish.

It will be on the Mur de Huy that the winner is decided at La Flèche Wallonne, with its cruel ramps of up to 20%.

Before this, however, the race will take its toll with the usual route of punchy climbs in the Ardennes. Beginning in Herstal, the race will head over the Trasenster and Les Forges, before taking in the finishing circuits that have come to define the modern race.

Now in its 90th edition, La Flèche Wallonne ends on a circuit that includes the Côte d’Ereffe (2.1km at 5%), the Côte de Cherave (1.3 km at 8,1%), and the Mur de Huy (1.3km at 9.6%). The peloton will face this circuit on three occasions, with the third and final ascent of the Mur de Huy taking the riders to the finish line.

Soon following La Flèche Wallonne, UAE Team Emirates-XRG will take on the four-day stage race, Vuelta Asturias. Running from Thursday, 23 April to Sunday, 26 April, the 2.1 race in Spain will see the Emirati squad combine experience and youth in its seven-man squad.

Filippo Baroncini, Julius Johansen and Adrià Pericas will lead the line from the WorldTour side, with the squad completed by a quartet of riders from the team’s Gen Z lineup. Those riders will be Abdulla Jasim Al-Ali, Mohammad Almutaiwei, Daan Dijkman, and Jaime Torres.

Dijkman made his debut for the WorldTour side at the AlUla Tour earlier this year, and the first-year under-23 has only gone from strength to strength, winning the U23 Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Saturday. It was a win earned the hard way, with the young Dutchman in a breakaway for 86km of the finale. Despite being caught by the peloton late in the day, the UAE Team Emirates rider triumphed in the eventual sprint, sealing the biggest win of his fledgling career to date.

Guiding the way from the team car will be the Sports Directors, Tomas Gil and Aner Moreno.

Although this will be the 68th Vuelta Asturias, it will be only the third time that UAE Team Emirates-XRG takes to the start line. With that being said, the race has proved fruitful for the team to date. The last two editions have both been won by UAE Team Emirates-XRG, first by Isaac del Toro in 2024 and more recently by Marc Soler in 2025.

This time round, the race will begin and end in Oviedo, with four stages that are unrelenting with their rolling parcours. Along the way, Benia, Lena and Vegadeo will play host to the finishes of stages 1, 2 and 3, respectively, before stage 4 tracks from Lugones to Oviedo.

Of the four, stage 3 looks the toughest on paper. Beginning in Figueras, Saturday’s stage runs for 157.3km to Vegadeo, with 3,408m of elevation gain to be dealt with. The final climb of the day stands at 4.6% for 3.3km, and tops out with 18km to go.


As Soler played to his advantage last year, this year’s route is wide open for attacking racing. No day has less than 2,300m of climbing, and there are no classic summit finishes, playing to the hands of those who like to attack from far out and race on the front foot. This should make for some exciting racing in the 68th edition of the Vuelta Asturias.