On a stage that had \u201cbunch sprint\u201d stamped all over it, Sainte-Lucie-des-Laurentides, Que.\u2019s Nick Zukowsky (Pinarello-Q36.5) made sure it wasn\u2019t a procession.<\/p>\n
Stage 5 of the 2026 UAE Tour<\/a> rolled 168 km from Dubai Al Mamzar Park to Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University<\/a>, a pan-flat run destined, it seemed, for the fast men. And sure enough, when the dust settled it was Jonathan Milan throwing his arms aloft for the second day in a row, the Lidl-Trek powerhouse storming through a chaotic finale.<\/p>\n Behind him, Antonio Tiberi held onto the overall lead, while national champ Derek Gee-West remained seventh overall. But long before the sprint trains began to form, Zukowsky had already animated the day.<\/p>\n The move wasn\u2019t planned. In fact, it wasn\u2019t supposed to happen at all. But he ended up being away for almost 150 km.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea wasn\u2019t really to be in the break, to be honest,\u201d Zukowsky said. \u201cIt was a fight from the start \u2014 a lot of teams wanted it. Red Bull were attacking a lot, Jayco too. I just kind of got stuck in there\u2026 partly to mark the important moves, partly just for fun.\u201d<\/p>\n Somewhere in that early chaos, the Pinarello-Q36.5 rider found himself committed. What began as a quartet quickly became a trio when one rider sat up, leaving Zukowsky alongside Gianni Moscon of Red Bull\u2013BORA\u2013hansgrohe and Silvan Dillier of Alpecin-Deceuninck.<\/p>\n \u201cWe started with four, but in the end it was just the three of us,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce that happens on a stage like this, you know the odds aren\u2019t great.\u201d<\/p>\n The peloton, marshalled by the sprint teams, never let the leash grow too long. Still, the trio dangled out front, their advantage hovering around 50 seconds as the kilometres ticked away.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was pretty steady all day, nothing crazy,\u201d Zukowsky said. \u201cBut in the final I thought, \u2018Okay, let\u2019s at least get some proper work in.\u2019 There was a crosswind section coming, so I started pushing before it. You never know what\u2019s happening behind \u2014 maybe they start playing games.\u201d<\/p>\n So he pressed on, driving into the headwind.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was hard to make it stick when you\u2019re doing most of the work,\u201d he said candidly. \u201cSilvan had spent a lot the last few days, so he was feeling it a bit. Moscon was pulling, but maybe not full gas. It\u2019s tough in that situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Tough \u2014 and ultimately futile. The elastic snapped with three kilometres to go, the peloton swallowed the break. But Zukowsky had no regrets.<\/p>\n \u201cOn paper this is a super, super boring stage,\u201d he said. \u201cSo why not give it a shot? Maybe people at home think, \u2018Hey, maybe they make it.\u2019 Even if it\u2019s 99.9 percent we don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n What followed wasn\u2019t exactly fairly textbook. Groupama-FDJ muscled to the front from Ineos, the road narrowing inside the final kilometre. Lead-out trains splintered, wheels overlapped, and then Milan launched after freestyling in the finale.<\/p>\n This is the Italian\u2019s second win in a row\u2013after a crash bunged up his sprint in Stage 1.<\/p>\n For Zukowsky, though, Stage 5 was never about the result sheet.<\/p>\n It was about lighting a spark in the desert, and turning a transitional day into something worth watching.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just fun,\u201d he said. \u201cFun to try.\u201d<\/p>\n Stage 5 is Al Ain Museum to Jebel Hafeet for a total of 168km. And it\u2019s got a nasty summit finish at the end, so definitely a GC day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a stage that had \u201cbunch sprint\u201d stamped all over it, Sainte-Lucie-des-Laurentides, Que.\u2019s Nick Zukowsky (Pinarello-Q36.5) made sure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10676,10677,936,10678,51],"class_list":{"0":"post-14957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zurich","8":"tag-jonathan-milan","9":"tag-nickolas-zukowsky","10":"tag-spotlight","11":"tag-uae-tour","12":"tag-zurich"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}