Soufiane Haddi gave the home crowd reason to celebrate as the Skydive Dubai cyclist clinched the young riders’ white jersey as well as the intermediate sprint UAE flag jersey following stage one of the Dubai Tour.
The 25-year-old Moroccan took both intermediate sprints at Silicon Oasis and in Fujairah to give the UAE outfit their first-ever jerseys at the Dubai Tour.
“I feel great, I’m really happy to get these jerseys,” said Haddi on Wednesday.
“But it’s still the first stage, it’s too soon to celebrate anything, it’s important to keep this up because the joy will be much more if I have a jersey at the end of the tour. We’ll keep working hard to keep the jerseys.
“It was a long stage and it was quite windy. It was also tough competing with all these top riders.
10km to go. @skydivedubai's Soufiane Haddi takes this intermediate sprint #dubaitour pic.twitter.com/GVYlp04Fgx
— Reem Abulleil (@ReemAbulleil) February 3, 2016
“I was very tired at the end to be honest, working hard from the very start of the stage, it’s only natural I was tired. The other riders coming from the peloton had fresher legs but thankfully I crossed the finish line with them.”
Skydive Dubai Pro Cycling Team – Al Ahli Club was formed in 2014 before the staging of the inaugural Dubai Tour.
Saeed Hareb, the secretary general of Dubai Sports Council and chairman of the Dubai Tour organising committee, said it was only a matter of time before Skydive Dubai made their mark on the event.
“In Arabic we have a saying ‘if you plant a seed you will get the harvest’. Skydive have been working hard for two years, inching closer to the podium and now in the third year of the Dubai Tour they’ve proven themselves,” Hareb told Sport360.
“We expected this because the amount of effort and work they’ve put in has been evident. The competition they faced today was really strong but they crossed the finish line with the world’s top sprinters and Soufiane got the jersey.”
Skydive Dubai weren’t the only Emirati team in the peloton yesterday. The newly-formed Al Nasr Pro Cycling enjoyed a positive debut and team leader Yousif Mirza relished the feeling of lining up for the tour in the colours of Al Nasr as a team leader.
“It’s an incredible feeling. Being a team leader, representing the UAE in this Dubai Tour, fills me with great pride. I got over some nerves following the team presentation and we’re hoping for the best during these four days,” said Mirza.
“We decided to give half the slots on the team to Emiratis and the other half to foreign riders because the main objective of this new team is to raise the level of national riders, to take them from an amateur level to a professional level. Giving them exposure to race against some of the world’s best riders will give them great experience and that will eventually impact the level of the entire sport across the UAE as well as our national team.”
