Sky’s the limit for Haddi after stage win

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  • Precious home win: Soufiane Haddi.

    Skydive Dubai’s Soufiane Haddi triumphed on home soil yesterday as he pedaled his way to victory in stage six of the Tour du Maroc.

    The Moroccan, who joined the UAE outfit last year, crossed the finish line first after a gruelling 138.5km stage that took the cyclists from Oujda to Nador.

    Haddi, 24, completed the stage in 2hr 51min 50sec, ahead of France’s Pierre Moncorge and Morocco’s Essaid Abelouache.

    The stage win helped Haddi move up from sixth to fourth in the general classification and he now trails race leader Anass Ait Al Abdia by 1min 16sec.

    “I’m extremely proud and happy to win this stage,” Haddi told Sport360°. “This is the first time for me to contest the Tour du Maroc with Skydive Dubai. So returning to my home tour as a professional, with a professional team is just great.

    “It will be tough to win the GC jersey but I’ll do my best and hopefully we can get some more stage wins.”

    Skydive Dubai’s Vladimir Gusev is third in the GC, also 1min 16sec behind Al Abdia, while Tomasz Marczynski of team Torku Sekerspor is second, just three seconds off the top.

    This is the second stage win of the 2015 Tour du Maroc for Skydive Dubai, after Edgar Pinto triumphed in stage three in Fes. Pinto held on to his polka dot jersey, as leader of the mountains classification.

    Seven Emiratis are in action in Morocco with Yousif Mirza currently ranked the highest amongst them in the GC, lying in 58th place, 39min 26sec behind Abelouache.

    Skydive Dubai are top of the teams classification and sports director Humaid Mehrab said: “We are here without our best riders, Francisco Mancebo and Rafie Chtioui, but we still managed to win two stages.” 

    The Tour resumes today (Thursday) with the 155km seventh stage.

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