Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) lived up to his status as favourite for stage 1 of the AlUla Tour when he powered out of the splintering remnants of an 18-rider lead group to snatch the opening day's victory.
Second on the largely flat 158km stage starting and finishing at the AlUla Camel Cup track, with Milan Fretin (Cofidis), with Matteo Moschetti (Pinarello-Q36.5) in third.
A winner of a stage in the same race in 2023, Milan was able to make it into the lead group of 18 with two teammates when an echelon formed in the last 90 minutes of racing on exposed roads.
Then, despite the bunch closing in on them rapidly in the closing kilometre, the break stayed away, and Milan easily came around Fretin with 100 metres to go to claim his first win of 2026.
"I'm super-super happy," Milan said afterwards about his victory in stage 1 of the first of the 2026 early-season block of major Middle Eastern pro stage races. "It's a good way to start the year. To be honest, it was tougher than I expected.
"I'd expected some echelons but thought it would come back together. We had to push a lot to stay in the front, and my team did a great job doing that. So thanks to all the others for so much support.
"It's always a bit tricky in a group like that, maybe three or four riders could have got away, but we kept it together and they delivered me in the perfect position."
How it unfolded
A four-rider break comprising Mohammed Al-Wahibi (Oman) and his teammate and Omani National Champion Said Alrahbi, Ali Al Shaikhahmed (Saudi Arabia) and multiple Malaysian TT National Champion Muhammad Nur Aiman Bin Rosli (Terengganu Cycling Team) opened up an initial gap of nearly four minutes, before the bunch, visibly rooting for a sprint, began to react. With a fast rise in impetus in the main pack, it came as no surprise that, some 65km from the line, the last survivor of the break, Al Shaikhahmed, was reeled in.
Shortly after a crash involving Jan Christen (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Joris Delbove (TotalEnergies) and two other riders, forcing the Swiss pro into a very long, ultimately successful chase by UAE, echelons formed on the extremely exposed, flat desert roads.
The most dangerous of these, an 18-rider group that quickly gained nearly 40 seconds, contained multiple top sprinters, including 2020 winner Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious), Fernando Gaviria (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), Fabio Jakobsen (Picnic-PostNL) and, above all, key favourite Milan.
Despite the bunch closing it down to 15 seconds at one point, with three riders in the move, amongst them their sprinter Fretin, Cofidis pushed on hard. They were aided by Tudor and Picnic, as well as Lidl-Trek's Jakob Soderqvist and Kristian Egholm.
At 11km to go, their margin had moved back up to 40 seconds, and the big question was whether the move would push on after the second sprint of the day. Mark Donovan (Pinarello-Q36.5) snatched the maximum points and bonus seconds on offer in the sprint, and Gaviria tried to keep the pace high, but the 18's advantage was shrinking remorselessly again.
Would they make it? Their lead was only a scant handful of seconds' advantage as the bunch burned back onto the camel track finale, and yet somehow it doubled again as Lidl-Trek buried themselves for Milan, aided by Cofidis. Crucially, another expected big player like UAE likely could not contribute much behind, having worked so hard for Christen, and so it was the 18 leaders that decided the stage, albeit by the bare minimum.
De Jong made a break from long, trying to surprise the group on a long right-hand bend in the closing kilometre, but Hugo Page (Cofidis) reeled him back in with a searingly long counter-charge, and it all came down to the sprint.
Using Page as a leadout right up until less than 100 metres to go, Milan then barely needed more than a dozen pedal strokes to secure the 26th victory of his career – and with two more options in the 2026 AIUIa Tour still to come, it may well be quickly followed by a 27th.
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