Warren Barguil was the first home from Team Giant-Alpecin on today’s queen stage of the Tour of Oman, featuring a brutally hot final climb of Green Mountain after 189km of racing. Barguil came over the finish in 26th place, 2’43” down on the stage winner.

Georg Preidler and Carter Jones followed not far behind Barguil in 28th and 29th place respectively atop the final ascent, at 2’57” and 3’08”, on what was the first real climbing test for the team of the 2015 season.

The stage was largely a very steady race once again, behind a plucky breakaway of just two riders, who reached a maximum over over 12 minutes advantage by the mid-way point. The teams interested in the overall classification started to take control behind and their lead quickly started to fall, with just one minute at 10km to go. As the ascent loomed large ahead the game was up and as the peloton started to climb it soon splintered with riders quickly falling off the pace.

The team positioned Barguil, Jones and Preidler at the base of the climb and from there it was up to them to stay in contact with the leaders as long as they could, with the latter two positioning and helping Barguil where possible. However Barguil was feeling the effects of both the heat and from his fall on yesterday’s stage and soon lost contact as the pace was lifted from the front. Jones and Preidler pressed on in a select final group of 15 but eventually lost contact, being passed by Barguil before the finish.

In the final stages of the climb it was every rider for himself and eventually Rafael Valls (Lampre-Merida) took the stage honours after over 5h46 of racing.

Warren Barguil gave his thoughts after the stage, saying: “Today wasn’t super, I had some pain in my back and elbow after falling yesterday, and I lost contact early on the climb. I wasn’t on a good day today and there’s still some work to do before I start to get my legs back but it is still early in the season and I’m here to build up my form.

“I’m not usually one for a super strong start to the season and with this heat here it makes it even harder, but I hope to finish this race well, and there are still lots of possibilities for tomorrow’s stage. The first race always helps to see what level you’re at after the winter, and now we have a better idea.”