{"id":699501,"date":"2026-07-19T05:30:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T05:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/699501\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T05:30:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T05:30:25","slug":"everyone-wants-to-be-in-uae-team-emirates-xrg-you-can-decide-how-the-race-happens-tables-turn-at-tour-de-france-as-wellens-and-mcnulty-become-breakaway-riders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/699501\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Everyone wants to be in UAE Team Emirates-XRG, you can decide how the race happens\u2019 \u2013 Tables turn at Tour de France as Wellens and McNulty become breakaway riders"},"content":{"rendered":"

So far in this Tour de France<\/a>, one of the major themes has been UAE Team Emirates-XRG\u2019s stifling of the breakaways, with Tadej Poga\u010dar helping himself to three stage victories<\/a>, handing one to his teammate Isaac del Toro, and overseeing a pattern baroudeurs being kept on very tight leashes.<\/p>\n

But the tables were turned on Friday, as UAE got in on the action themselves<\/a>, firing three of their eight riders up the road.<\/p>\n

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If you can\u2019t beat \u2018em, join \u2018em. UAE have been unwaveringly strong since the race began but even they felt what was coming on Friday was as good as uncontrollable.<\/p>\n

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With major GC shake-outs expected on Saturday and Sunday, Friday\u2019s stage had breakaway written all over it, not least due to the anxiety and even ill-feeling that has been brewing among the teams who\u2019d hedged their Tour de France bets on the breakaways.<\/p>\n

In the end, a whopping 58 riders made it up the road \u2013 almost a peloton in itself \u2013 and UAE threw themselves into it.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe plan was to be in front, with Felix [Gro\u00dfschartner], Brandon [McNulty] and me, if there was a big group that would go away that we would be in it, and that is exactly what happened,\u201d Tim Wellens told Cyclingnews outside the UAE bus in Belfort.<\/p>\n

They were there to take the pressure off the rest of the team, reducing the need for the others to control the peloton. In fact, we heard on race radio a UAE director saying that they could let the gap grow out to around seven minutes and then other teams would step in \u2013 and that\u2019s exactly what happened as Bahrain Victorious, who have Lenny Martinez in ninth place, got spooked by 10th-placed Tom Pidcock\u2019s (Pinarello Q36.5) presence up the road.<\/p>\n

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Bahrain worked at the head of the peloton for much of the day, and as the breakaway hit the day\u2019s two key climbs, Wellens, McNulty and Gro\u00dfschartner could begin to race for themselves for the first time in this Tour.<\/p>\n

In the end, Wellens and McNulty made it into the final 10-man selection but victory slipped away as Mauro Schmid and Harold Tejada stole up the road in the finale<\/a>. McNulty launched a last-gap solo bid to chase them down but settled for fifth, with Wellens ninth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s super fun to decide the race. I think everybody wants to be in UAE Team Emirates-XRG because you can decide a little bit how the race happens,\u201d Wellens said, in a message that might not land so softly among the other teams.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s much nicer to do this than just follow all day,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The teams classification question<\/p>\n

Stage 13 gave UAE Team Emirates-XRG the chance to give some of their peloton-pullers a rest, and others a chance to race for themselves, but there was another potential factor: the teams classification.<\/p>\n

This has been a bit of a whisper at this Tour, with numerous rival teams speculating that UAE have kept such a tight leash on breakaways because they are actively targeting teams classification.<\/p>\n

The team have played this down, with Team Manager Joxean Fernandez Matxin told Cyclingnews this morning that it had nothing to do with the way they\u2019ve managed the breakaways so far.<\/p>\n

And yet, McNulty’s and Wellens\u2019 time gains on Friday saw the team make a sizable jump in the teams classification, closing the gap on the leaders Lidl-Trek from 24 minutes to just over nine minutes.<\/p>\n

The teams classification is calculated by adding together the times of each team\u2019s top three riders on each stage, and bundling them into a rolling, general ranking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are doing well in the team classification, so that is a nice bonus. Everyone likes to be on the podium in Paris, and it would be a shame to ride so strongly as a team and then not win the team classification,\u201d said Wellens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we manage to do that, it is of course a nice bonus. If we hadn’t been in the breakaway, we wouldn’t be riding ourselves into the ground trying to close the gap. So it is a nice bonus, but not a must.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s biggest bike race deserves world-class coverage. Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our unrivalled reporting of the 2026 Tour de France. From Barcelona through to Paris, our experienced team will bring you breaking news, expert insight, and in-depth coverage from every stage as the battle for the yellow jersey plays out. Plus, access the Cyclingnews app to follow the action on the go! <\/a>Find out more<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So far in this Tour de France, one of the major themes has been UAE Team Emirates-XRG\u2019s stifling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-699501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}