Luke Plapp 'as stoked as can be' with first WorldTour podium at UAE Tour
Australian defends second ov෴erall on Jebel Hafe🎶et, holds runner up position by one second

Amid the battle for stage victory and the red jersey on the last day of the UAE Tour on Jebel Hafeet, overall runner-up 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Luke Plapp (Ineos Grenadiers) kept his head down and stuck to his ꧟own objectives – not quite oblivious to eve♐rything that was going on around him, but almost.
As Plapp explained afterwaꦕrds, in his first ever fight for a GC WorldTour podium, his strategy was🍸 simply to tackle the race’s crucial final climb at his own pace and see how far that got him. And by and large, that strategy worked.
Plapp was sometimes alone on the climb after he was dropped when eventual 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:stage winner Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) blasted away half way up, and sometimes in groups of one or two. He finally crossed the line in sixth place, just behind GC rival Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious) and then waited to see what the168澳洲5最新开奖结果: final ranking looked like.
He soo🐼n learned that he had remained in second overall behind Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep), albeit by a minimal margin of one second on Yates, and four seconds on fourth-placed Bilbao. It had been a tight battle bu💛t one in which the Australian National Champion secured his first ever WorldTour stage race podium. “It’s a massive step forwards,” he said.
“That was a time trial for me from🎀 bottom to top, I had to pace it as well as I could, I couldn’t have gone any harಌder.
“To be honest, I think Yatesy was unbeatable today, I don’t think anybody in the world could have come close to him. So it was a great day, I’m really glad I held onto second – just, by about one second൩, I think it was in the end. So I’m as stoked as I can be.
“Like you saw, every second mattered and that showed you the importance of those bonus sprint seconds I got on the first d♐ay. That was the difference between second and thi꧅rd on the podium.”
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Plapp knew that UAE Team Emirates were going to ramp up the speed on the climb, but he stuck to his own strategy fo⛄r the ascent. “🐻Mentally I was prepared for that, but I knew I didn’t want to go in too deep. I got sucked in and probably did hold that wheel for a bit too long, I did die a bit by the end.
“But 🎐like I said, mate, there was no racing there. It was just get myself from the bottom to the top as quickly as possibꦐle.”
The UAE Tour was always on the agenda, he said, having taken several leaves out of Adam Yates book from 2022 when the two were teammates at Ineos and Yates ran second behind Tadej Pogačar.
“I learned so mu🐟ch from him, it got me in a good position that I knew what it would take. I think since last year I always wanted to target this race. So it’s been great to see that happen,” Plapp said.
“It’s been really nice preparing for it in Aust𝓰ralia in the heat, and that longer training in Australia has definitely paid off now.”
▨Next stop for Plapp will be Europe and “settling in to the cold winter there and getting ready for the Volta a Catalunya. T🍎hen we’ll see where the season goes from there.
“I’m not sure what GC races could be on my calendar yet, we’ve got such a strong team 🌸with so many climbers, you get to a race and maybe four or five guys are going good enough to be a leader.
&ldquꦺo;So at the end of the day, if there&🌊rsquo;s someone to work for, too, whether it’s riding the mountains or helping out Ethan [Hayter] in the sprints, I’m happy to do whatever’s needed.”
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.