The sun and the sprinters monopolized the opening stage of the first edition of the Abu Dhabi Tour, an enchanting race at whose start Lampre-Merida lined up Cimolai, Mario Costa, Modolo, Mori, Ulissi and Xu Gang.

The bunch moved from Qasr al Sarab, in the desert, and covered 174 km of road in the middle of the dunes and sand until the finish in Madinat Zayed.

During the stage, the race was led by six attackers, who were strictly controlled by the peloton, and in the final 30 km by the counter-attacker Chtioui, whose action was neutralized with 1km to go.

In the final sprint, Lampre-Merida launched Davide Cimolai as top quality lead-out man for Sacho Modolo. The souble winner of a stage in the Giro d'Italia exploited the support of his team mates to reach the front position of the bunch at 70 m to go, but he had difficulties in defending the position in the last bend 500m from the finish line.

Once he had lost the front row, he did not manage to recover positions anymore, so Lampre-Merida obtained the 35th place with Ulissi.

"The stage was interesting because of its peculiarity: the first part was lightly hilly in the dunes zone, then the road led to the arrival,” sports director Marco Marzano explained. “The course was not favourable for the attackers, in fact the bunch could control the breakaway easily and promote the sprint arrival.

“The cooperation between Cimolai and Modolo was good, but the result wasn't, so we'll need to intensify our efforts even more in the next stages to achieve a top result".