After the exciting finale of the opening stage with the sixth place claimed by Edwin Avila on Madinat Zayed’s finish line, Team Colombia-Coldeportes’ Escarabajos endured a quiet day in Abu Dhabi Tour’s stage 2, 130 km around the Emir’s capital.

The new overall leader, Italian Elia Viviani (Team Sky), claimed a strong win in the massive sprint, preceding the World Champion Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Fabio Sabatini (Etixx-Quick Step), whilst Avila, 16th, was the first athlete of Claudio Corti’s Team on the finish line for the second consecutive day.

In the early race, a 6-man escape, including Patten (Team Wiggins), Voss (Bora-Argon), Haddi (Skydive Dubai), Belkov (Katusha), Bazzana and Zurlo (United Healthcare), moved on the attack. The peloton did not leave any chance at the breakaway group, which lost half of the riders in the second part of the stage. Bazzana, Patten and Belkov were the last three riders to surrender with 10km to go.

At this point, Chtioui (Skydive Dubai) and Vorobyev (Katusha) in a first moment, and Oss (BMC) in the last kilometer, tried to give the other riders the slip, but Astana, Orica-GreenEDGE and Tinkoff-Saxo caught the escapees before launching the sprint, dominated by Viviani.

“Today the race was controlled by the sprinters’ teams, so we saved energy in view of the queen stage”, Sports Director Oscar Pellicioli said. “Tomorrow’s stage will decide the GC, we want to be in the mix with our climbers, Alex Cano and the youngster Daniel Martinez”.

Tomorrow, Saturday October 10th, the Escarabajos will take part in Tour of Abu Dhabi’s stage 3 (Al Ain – Jebel Hafeet 140 Km) and Giro dell’Emilia.