The UCI sports director has confirmed that the UAE’s man-made mountain won’t be part of the Abu Dhabi Road Worlds course.
UCI sports director Peter Van den Abeele has told Sporza that a man-made mountain will not be part of the 2028 Road World Championships course, saying that “it will be a sprinter’s world championship”.
That year’s edition of the race, which was awarded to Abu Dhabi, was initially assumed to be a sprinter-friendly edition, but rumours have been circulating for several months that man-made climbs were being constructed for the event. Tim Merlier has been particularly forthright on the subject, airing his concerns that on repeated visits to the UAE Tour he has seen a man-made mountain rise a little more each year – and with it, his own chances diminishing of being able to contend for a road world title. “Every generation of sprinters should get at least one real chance at a world title,” Merlier said last year. “I fear that chance will never come for me.”
The climb in question, Al Wathba, has been under construction since 2023, bringing a short but steep ascent to the flat surrounds of Abu Dhabi: 1.4 kilometres in length at a 6% average gradient, ramping up to 9% at its steepest. This year, however, Al Wathba will increase to 2 km in length, with a punishing final 500 metre pinch reaching gradients of 11%.
By 2028 – according to Spanish publication Marca, who cite internal documentation from civil engineering companies working on the project – the final form of the climb could reach 3.8 km in length, with steep ramps towards the top. Thousands of tons of sand and rock and asphalt, initially envisaged as a rainfall-boost for the region.
Artificial climbs for Abu Dhabi Worlds?
After Tim Merlier lamented the plight of the sprinters in light of an artificial climb allegedly being prepared for the 2028 UCI Road World Championships in Abu Dhabi, Marca dug deeper to find details on the Al Wathba climb and other projects that could impact the Worlds route in three
Separate construction is underway on the nearby Hudayriyat Island, which fashions itself as the sports hub of Abu Dhabi. In addition to an indoor velodrome and outdoor cycling circuits, a number of hills are being built – described by Marca as “designer hills, conceived to give the landscape a third dimension and to offer cycling an element that simply does not exist naturally in the gulf.”
Those construction projects combined to build a perception in the mind of Merlier, and much of the media that have reported on the route of the 2028 Worlds, that the playing field was being literally tilted in the favour of the UAE’s adopted hero, Tadej Pogačar. With soul-sapping climbs rearing out of the desert, no wonder the sprinters were feeling downcast.
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