Team Bahrain Victorious is set to take on the only WorldTour race in the GCC, the UAE Tour. A strong lineup is led by Pello Bilbao for the seven-stage race taking place from February 19 to February 25. 

Having narrowly missed out on the podium by a mere three seconds in the final stage of last year’s edition, Bilbao is more motivated than ever to make his step up to the podium in a race he has continually performed well at: “The last few years I’ve really enjoyed the UAE Tour. It’s changed my opinion about this race. My first experiences were not good with illness and crashes, so I was never feeling my best in that race. But in the last three editions, I’ve really started to understand the race, and it’s a really interesting and different race from what we are used to in Europe. I love the chance of echelons and this kind of racing.

Last year, I was a bit disappointed in the end, as I expected to be on the podium and on the last day, it was a hard day for me, losing out on the podium by a few seconds after a really good race with all the team.

For this year, I’m feeling really good and motivated and will arrive in perfect shape with the goal of fighting for the podium and maybe even a stage. It would be a nice gift for my Birthday.”

Bilbao will be supported by Torstein Træen, Cameron Scott, Johan Price-Pejtersen, and Rainer Kepplinger. Alongside them will also be the German duo Nikias Arndt and sprinter Phil Bauhaus, who will lead the charge on the sprint stages, ensuring Team Bahrain Victorious is competitive throughout the seven stages.

Over the course of the 985.1 kilometres of racing, riders will face various challenges, including a demanding 12.1-kilometre Individual Time Trial (ITT) on stage 2. Meanwhile, the main battle for the General Classification (GC) contenders will be the iconic climbs of Jebel Jais and Jebel Hafeet on stages 3 and 7, respectively. However, the contenders must remain vigilant, particularly on all the stages, where crosswinds can ignite the race early on, as witnessed in last year’s opening stage.

Sports Director Neil Stephens: “We are really looking forward to the UAE Tour this year. It’s the first WorldTour race for some of our riders, while some of them are coming here from Australia. This is a great race with 4 flat stages, 2 mountain-top finishes and an ITT. We’ve been putting in a lot of hard work in our TT over the winter, and it will be great to see this in the race. 

Phil Bauhaus, in Australia, showed he was in great shape and has since then been training really well. He has a bit of a thorn in his side that he hasn’t gotten a stage win so far this year. We will certainly be looking to give him support to take a win at one of the four flat stages.

Pello Bilbao has trained well and raced well in Spain, and he will be coming back to achieve a podium, which he has done on other occasions at this race. He’s time-trialling and climbing well, so we hope he will be up there competing with the best.

 Then it’s great to have Nikias back from injury as our road captain; he’s basically our third director if you’d like. He can set direction for the team on the road which is critical on the tricky roads in the UAE. We’ve got Cameron Scott, who is showing his lead-out capabilities, while Rainer and Træen will be key support on the climbs, and Johan will be supporting the team and looking for a good result in the ITT.”