WATCH Abu Dhabi Tour Stage 4 highlights

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  • Mark Cavendish described his Abu Dhabi Tour stage four victory under the lights at Yas Marina Circuit as a “special way to close out the season” while Tanel Kangert was thrilled to head into the holidays with a rare overall triumph.

    Cavendish, an ambassador for the Abu Dhabi Tour, concluded his road racing season with two stage wins in the UAE capital, having also captured stage two on Friday, and leaves the Emirates with the Points Classification Green Jersey.

    The ‘Manx Missile’ outsprinted Trek-Segafredo’s Giancomo Nizzolo and Team Sky’s Elia Viviani in a bunch finish to take his number of victories in 2016 to a perfect 10.

    “I’m very happy, especially in such a tremendous setting, to get dark while riding on Yas Marina Circuit was not just a special way to close out the Abu Dhabi Tour, it was a special way to close out the whole season,” said Cavendish, who was a silver medallist on the track at the Olympics in Rio and also came second at the Road World Championships in Qatar last week.

    “Everyone was motivated there, it was really fast in the end there, my Dimension Data team-mates did an incredible job. They were controlling the break, I honestly thought we’d have support from the other sprint teams since there’s not so many of them that have won stages here. But my team-mates controlled it with Astana and gave me a perfect lead-out. I am super happy to win the Nation Towers Green Jersey.”

    The fourth and final stage of the Abu Dhabi Tour took place entire on Yas Marina Circuit, that plays host to the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix, and it seems the riders were inspired by the venue as average speeds reached 54.4km/hr in the last of the 26 laps they completed.

    A five-man breakaway of Michal Paluta, Sergey Firsanov, Frederik Frison, Yauheni Sobal and Kristian House controlled the majority of the race and were only caught in the final lap.

    Nizzolo, the winner of the first stage at Madinat Zayed on Thursday, was denied a double, and had to settle for second place.

    Asked if he can still go home satisfied, having taken victory on day one, the Italian said: “You won a stage but in the end you want to win two, and if you win two, you want to win three.

    “Of course I wanted to win again. I’ve done a big effort before the last corner to take a good position and then later I paid the price in the last metres but I did my best so I can’t complain.”

    Were the 26 laps of the 5.5km race track perhaps too long and monotonous?

    “I don’t know how many laps Formula One is doing but not much more I guess,” joked Nizzolo.

    “But the atmosphere was great and I really enjoyed the last race of the season. I’m going to go home very happy.”

    On his part, Kangert, whose gritty stage three performance on the 11km climb up Jebel Hafeet on Saturday gave him the overall Red Jersey, was surprised by how tricky the Yas Marina track was.

    “I think Formula One drivers must be crazier than we are, because the corners here, they are really tight,” Kangert told Sport360. “When I look at Formula One races on TV it doesn’t look like the road is quite narrow and the corners are tight and they’re really hairpins, they must have great courage to race here at 250 or 300km/hr in a racing car.”

    The Astana rider, who has been a super-domestique for many of his team-mate Vincenzo Nibali’s great victories over the past four years, admits he is not used to going for overall wins but is happy he made the most of his chance when he got it.

    “It’s a strange (feeling), it’s new to me, I think no one expected to have a winner like me here but sometimes I think it’s not a bad thing if smaller fish also win big races,” said Kangert.

    “It gives me extra motivation for seasons to come, and ending a season on a high is always great, it makes the next one easier to start.”

    Team Sky’s Nicolas Roche came second in the overall General Classification, with Lampre-Merida’s Diego Ulissi completing the podium.

    Nibali and Alberto Contador came fourth and fifth respectively, one minute was behind the leader.

    Trek-Segafredo’s Julien Bernard clinched the young rider’s White Jersey while Jens Keukeleire of Orica-BikeExchange took home the intermediate sprint Black Jersey.

    The Abu Dhabi Tour will return in February 2017 with a new slot in the calendar and an upgraded WorldTour status.

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