australian climber Jetten It will be DNS on Stage 3 of the UAE Tour, with the first summit of the day at Jebel Jais as the Tour winner is hurting his knee.
Vine, who was considered a potential overall contender before the game, had to withdraw from the seven-day event early, the already disadvantaged Emirates team announced in a press release on Wednesday.
According to the press release, “Vine entered the race with some minor training pains in his knee that did not improve this week. Therefore, as a precautionary measure, we have decided to withdraw him from the race to allow him time to recover.”
Last fall, Vine had a breakthrough performance in Spain, where he won the Vuelta a España hillclimb double and appeared to be on track to win the mountain category before he crashed. He then put on a strong start to the season at the Tour of Santos in January after claiming the Australian National Time Trial Championship, taking an overall victory.
new emirates team The Alpecin-Fenix switch driver, along with former race winner Adam Yates and American all-rounder Brandon McNulty, is likely to be one of several options for the team at the summit finish of Stage 3.
The Emirates will play in Europe in February after two consecutive home wins with Tadej Pogačar, and despite Yates having a strong pre-tournament favourite, the Emirates team have had a tougher run this year.
Like all of the UAE’s top riders, Vine was eliminated in the first stage UAE trip, The subsequent loss of time all but destroyed their chances of a third consecutive win. A solid but unremarkable eighth for the UAE team in the team time trial on Stage 2 limited the damage, but it remains to be seen what the team’s climbers can do on Jebel Jais and Jebel Hafeet.
It became apparent that as the race progressed to the midpoint, Emirates were nowhere near as dominant as they had been in the previous two years, and the loss of a driver as strong as Vine just added another hurdle in their efforts to claw back time.