{"id":51976,"date":"2026-02-21T17:10:49","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T17:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/?p=51976"},"modified":"2026-02-22T15:49:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T15:49:15","slug":"luke-plapp-battles-to-second-on-jebel-hafeet-moves-to-third-in-uae-tour-gc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/luke-plapp-battles-to-second-on-jebel-hafeet-moves-to-third-in-uae-tour-gc\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke Plapp battles to second on Jebel Hafeet, moves to third in UAE Tour GC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Luke Plapp<\/strong> continued his strong start to the season as he secured a superb second place atop the 1,300-metre Jebel Hafeet, jumping up to third in the overall classification at the <strong>UAE Tour<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The young Australian talent delivered a consistent performance for <strong>Team Jayco AlUla<\/strong> on the race\u2019s queen stage. He held off several attacks at the start of the long climb before launching a counterattack about three kilometres from the finish with only Isaac Del Toro able to hold him off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the top of Jebel Hafeet loomed, Plapp passed the race leader Antonio Tiberi and Felix Gall, who had been part of an earlier attack. On the line, he was beaten by Del Toro by just 12 seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks to his second-place finish, Plapp has gained two places in the general classification, and going into the seventh and final stage, is now in third place overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Luke Plapp<\/strong><\/span><br><em>\u201cToday was all about just trying to take it as easy as possible and stay cool during the stage. It was quite hot out there and the boys looked after me with water and ice all day. Getting to the last climb it was all about being as patient as possible and try to pace my effort all the way to the top. In the end, it worked out perfectly. I\u2019m super proud about my stage today and hopefully we can defend third place in the GC tomorrow.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>David McPartland (Sport Director)<\/strong><\/span><br><em>\u201cToday&#8217;s goal was to try to improve on fifth place in the GC, and we&#8217;re very happy with our race. Plappy had a fantastic ride on the Jebel Hafeet climb, and I&#8217;m really happy for him and the team, both for second place on the stage and third overall.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">2026 UAE Tour stage six results<\/span><br>1. Isaac Del Toro 03:27:54<br><strong>2. Luke Plapp (Team Jayco AlUla) +12<\/strong><br>3. Felix Gall +21<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">2026 UAE Tour general classification after stage six<\/span><br>1. Isaac Del Toro 18:13:42<br>2. Antonio Tiberi +20<br><strong>3. Luke Plapp (Team Jayco AlUla) +1:14<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Photo credit: Sprint Cycling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Luke Plapp continued his strong start to the season as he secured a superb second place atop the 1,300-metre Jebel Hafeet, jumping up to third in the overall classification&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51978,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[296,386],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51976"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51979,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51976\/revisions\/51979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenedgecycling.com\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}