A quick scan of the top of the results sheet for the second stage of the UAE Tour Women doesn't exactly inspire shock, awe or intrigue.
Lorena Wiebes won a sprint? Huh, what's new there. She did the same yesterday on the opening stage, and on 93 other previous occasions before arriving in the Middle East to begin her 2025 season.
Lily Williams (Human Powered Health) second? That's cool, very close to her first-ever win not on US soil, and great to see Ireland's 23-year-old Lara Gillespie (UAE Team ADQ) round out the podium in her debut WorldTour season.
But, as is often the case, that fails to tell the whole story. Snuck into fourth on the day's result list, however, is Elisa Longo Borghini, and a flick to the GC standings reveals she now has a one minute and 20 seconds buffer over her nearest rival for the overall: Visma-Lease a Bike's Pauine Ferrand-Prévot.
From kilometre zero at the Al Dhafra Fort, crosswinds incited the home UAE Team ADQ and their new leader Elisa Longo Borghini into splitting the race apart. It kind of worked, the peloton separated, but rather than forming into various bunches Longo Borghini found herself off the front of the race in a group of five, alongside Wiebes, Williams and two of her own UAE teammates.
They dangled for a while, just nine seconds ahead, but then the gap yawned out to three minutes, and when the reduced peloton finally got its chase organised on this flat and almost 50 km sloping downhill run into the finish, they still had a minute and a half, before Wiebes took her reward for a day's work off the front.
A vintage day's racing, one almost reminiscent of that Chris Froome/Peter Sagan Tour de France 2016 breakaway, with sprinter and GC rider teaming up to thwart the bunch, except the exploits today were far greater and will ultimately prove more decisive in this race's outcome.
Tomorrow, stage 3, is a mountain top finish up Jebel Hafeet, and Longo Borghini, who won this race overall in 2023, was the race favourite before today's events.
After a day off the front, will she pay for it tomorrow? Was it idiotic? Or brilliant genius? Will the peloton rue having had the race favourite within reach and not stamping out this audacious move or have they allowed the Italian to ride herself into submission? We'll find out on the mountain top finish tomorrow.
Abby Mickey contributed reporting to this piece.
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