{"id":461316,"date":"2026-02-06T02:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T02:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/461316\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T02:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T02:23:10","slug":"preview-muscat-classic-2026-astana-go-to-war-with-jayco-and-movistar-on-packed-hilly-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/461316\/","title":{"rendered":"Preview Muscat Classic 2026 &#8211; Astana go to war with Jayco and Movistar on packed hilly classic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is a race that is going to be wide open, as we have got some difficult climbing but it is not long enough for the pure climbers; the puncheurs may have the upper hand but historically this is a finale where some groups typically come back before the final uphill sprint. But the quality of puncheurs here is notable, with riders such as <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/mauro-schmid\" title=\"Mauro Schmid\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mauro Schmid<\/a>, Christian Scaroni, Mikkel Honor\u00e9, Roger Adri\u00e0 and plenty more who thrive on this type of short climb.<\/p>\n<p>The pure climbers can also make the difference depending on the situation, men like Adam Yates or Sepp Kuss even if they lack the explosivity; others such as Luke Plapp and Alberto Bettiol are deadly if they get any gap before the finish; whilst some such as Bryan Coquard and Vincenzo Albanese will try to hide and hope for a sprint to potentially come through to decide the race.<\/p>\n<p>*** <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/mauro-schmid\" title=\"Mauro Schmid\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mauro Schmid<\/a>, Christian Scaroni<br \/>** Mikkel Honor\u00e9, Roger Adri\u00e0, Diego Ulissi, Luke Plapp<br \/>* Adam Yates, Valentin Paret-Peintre, William Lecerf Junior, Bart Lemmen, Quentin Pacher, Diego Pescador, Alberto Bettiol, Vincenzo Albanese, Paul Double, Bryan Coquard<\/p>\n<p>How: Small group sprint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is a race that is going to be wide open, as we have got some difficult climbing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,232627,784,227199,236929,3019,85],"class_list":["post-461316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cristian-scaroni","tag-cycling","tag-mauro-schmid","tag-muscat-classic","tag-preview","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}