Jonas Vingegaard comes of age on the big stage; a summit finish win on UAE Tour against some of the best riders in the world

Jonas Vingegaard, a 24-year-old riding for Jumbo Visma, has won stage 5 of UAE Tour after an attack close to the summit finish on Jebel Jais.

After his stage win of yesterday, Ireland’s Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep) finished in 119th place and in a large group 18:36 down on the stage winner.

Bennett (30) should have two more chances to take another win from UAE Tour as the final two stages, tomorrow and Saturday, are flat and are likely to end in bunch sprints.

The stage winner today, Vingegaard, is among a new generation of Jumbo Visma riders coming through the ranks; the Dane and 2018 Tour de l’Avenir stage winner in his 3rd season with the team and won a stage of the Tour de Pologne in 2019.

Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) was the last survivor from the early breakaway and managed to hold off the very large select group deep into the final kilometre after what was a hard but cagey finale up the final 21km climb.

Ineos Grenadiers took up the running on the climb – Carlos Rodriguez again really impressing – in a bid to set up Adam Yates for an attack on race leader Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates).

However, the select group was still quite large as the finish neared and Lutsenko was still plugging away out front solo.

Vingegaard attacked after Lutsenko on the wide open climb with about 500m to go and after Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo) had tried and been caught.

Lutsenko leading in the final kilometre after a brilliant effort, with eventual stage winner Vingegaard chasing him down and the select group with the race leader just behind him

Vingegaard caught and passed Lutsenko about 100 metres from the line and had plenty of time to celebrate what as a brilliant win. Lutsenko was absorbed by the select group, which split in the final push to the finish line.

Race leader Pogačar was 2nd on the stage with Yates on his wheel in 3rd place; both three seconds behind the stage winner.

Sergio Higuita (EF Education-Nippo) was 4th some five seconds down on the winner and one second after him came João Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep) in 5th place.

The result means Pogačar still leads overall by 45 seconds from Yates, with Almeida in 3rd at 1:12 and just two flat stages remaining.

Pogacar looked very strong today and, barring incident, he appears to have this race already won