UAE Team Emirates-XRG to make Tour of Britain debut

For the very first time in the team’s nine-year history, UAE Team Emirates-XRG will line up at the Lloyds Bank Tour of Britain from Tuesday, 2 September. As Great Britain’s flagship stage race, the Tour of Britain has been running since 2004, and this time round, the Emirati squad will be in attendance with a talented squad befitting of the race.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG will be led by the Frenchman Pavel Sivakov, who made his one and only appearance at the Tour of Britain back. In 2019. Just a second-year pro at the time, Sivakov rode to a commendable fourth-place finish in an edition animated by the eventual winner, Mathieu van der Poel.

Back in Britain six years on, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG climber will be making his first appearance since the Tour de France, where the 28-year-old helped teammate Tadej Pogačar to a fourth title in six years. Looking ahead to this year’s instalment of the Tour of Britain, Sivakov is full of optimism after a fruitful block of training in preparation.

Sivakov: “We’re very excited to be going to the Tour of Britain for the first time as a team. Personally I’ve raced here once before back in 2019 and have good memories of the big crowds and aggressive racing. I was fourth then and it would be nice to step onto the podium, whether it’s with me or one of my teammates.

“We have a full team of rouleurs who can be well suited to this terrain and the ‘grippy’ British roads so we hope for some big results and a nice week of racing.”

Of course, the Tour of Britain is a race that routinely throws up opportunities and pitfalls alike, favouring squads with a versatile fleet of riders. In the case of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Sivakov will be joined by rouleurs in Rune Herregodts and Julius Johansen, and the enterprising trio of António Morgado, Rui Oliveira and Florian Vermeersch.

Morgado, Oliveira and Vermeersch each pack a punch at the end of a hard day’s racing, and both Herregodts and Johansen can ride for hours on end without showing an inch of weakness. For Herregodts, the Tour of Britain will be his first race since fracturing his collarbone in the summer, and the Belgian is well prepared, having spent time at altitude in Livigno.

Complemented by Sivakov’s talents when the road goes uphill, the six-man squad looks well set to enter its first Tour of Britain with nothing to fear.

Leading the riders from the team cars will be experienced Sports Directors Fabrizio Guidi and Marco Marzano, both of whom have commandeered their fair share of victories in UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s impressive season to date.

The 21st edition of the Tour of Britain will begin with two days of racing across the flatlands of Suffolk, where a bunch sprint can be expected to decide both stages. Leaving Woodbridge on Tuesday, 2 September, stage 1 will take the riders to Southwold, before stage 2 begins and ends in Stowmarket.

Heading towards central England for a 122.8km-long route, stage 3 brings with it the first taste of hills in this year’s race, with the Hillfoot climb (700m at 5.2%) perhaps the most notable bump in the road. Beginning in Milton Keynes and ending in Ampthill, stage 3 certainly won’t be the most decisive of the race, but it may well give a first indication as to which riders are targeting the general classification.

The following day will be the longest of the race, standing at 186.9km between Atherstone and Burton Dassett Hills Country Park. With six categorised climbs on the route, it will be the first of two tough stages which will likely come to decide the general classification. Heading up the Sun Rising Hill (900m at 10%) and more across Warwickshire, stage 4 will end on an uphill finish that Sivakov will know well.

Standing at 5.7% for 1.4km, the climb at Burton Dassett Hills Country Park was used on the penultimate day in 2019, with Van der Poel conquering the tricky finish to sow the seeds of his overall win. On that occasion, Sivakov placed just five seconds down on the Dutchman and will no doubt have banked some tips and tricks for his return.

On stage 5, the Tour of Britain will leave England for Wales, and with it comes the notorious Tumble. Well known as one of the toughest hills in Britain, the Tumble will be climbed twice, with the second ascent providing the race its first true summit finish in many years. On a day with 2,332m of climbing across 133.6km, the Tumble, stretching out for 4.9km at 8%, will provide a fitting finale.

To close out the week’s racing, stage 6 of the Tour of Britain will begin in Newport at the Geraint Thomas National Velodrome of Wales, where the British rider will set out for the final day’s racing of his professional career. As such, the stage will head south across the Welsh countryside and end in the country’s capital, Cardiff.

Serving as the backdrop to the Tour of Britain’s final stage for the first time since 2017, Cardiff will see the race’s overall winner crowned on the afternoon of Sunday, 7 September.