The UAE Tour in 2020 has drawn an impressive field of GC favorites. Tadej Pogacar and Alejandro Valverde enter the race as the two favorites, but a host of worthy challengers will line up in the early season race to test their form.

Here are the GC contenders with an outside chance at winning the UAE Tour.

Carl Fredrik Hagen 

Carl Fredrik Hagen was new to the WorldTour in 2019, but by the end of the season, he had earned the attention of the peloton. Consistent finishes across the three weeks of the Vuelta a Espana earned him eighth place overall, a result which seemingly nobody expected.

Lotto Soudal will look towards the 28 year old from Norway with optimism in the UAE.

Chris Froome

Apart from a late season Saitama Criterium team time trial in 2019, Chris Froome has not competed since his catastrophic crash during the Criterium du Dauphine. 

The determined Brit has worked incredibly hard toward the goal of winning a fifth and record-tying Tour de France title. But at 34 years old, Froome is racing against the clock as much as he is against his own team of grand tour winners.

The road to the 2020 Tour de France begins in the UAE for Froome, where all will be revealed about his form and recovery.

Wout Poels

Wout Poels has been one of Team Ineos’ most reliable super domestiques and Chris Froome’s right hand man throughout many of his Tour de France victories. In 2019 however, Poels seemed to be lacking the form that we had come to expect of him in the Tour — as if his abilities had waned without Froome behind him.

In 2020 Poels enters a new phase of his career, following an offseason transfer to Bahrain McLaren. There is a long standing precedent of Team Ineos domestiques falling flat when they break away from Ineos to launch launch a solo career, but Bahrain-McLaren certainly hopes that Poels will not continue that trend. The UAE Tour will be his first test at leadership.

Koen Bouwman

Jumbo-Visma has slowly and methodically built a grand tour winning team with a much smaller budget than Team Ineos. The team has made calculated signings of stars such as Primoz Roglic and Tom Dumoulin, while investing in the development of young climbing talent to round out the team. 

Koen Bouwman, 26, is a great example of Jumbo Visma’s developmental branch of talented signings. The Dutch climber has been invaluable to the success of Primoz Roglic and Steven Kruijswijk in the mountains, and has shown potential in his own right when he is given free reign. 

Without a clear leader at the UAE Tour, Bouwman will be free to chase success on the races mountain stages. 

Giulio Ciccone

Giulio Ciccone was one of the best signings Trek-Segafredo made for the 2019 season. Ciccone took the 2019 Giro d’Italia by storm, winning the queen stage to Ponte di Legno, and dominating the king of the mountain competition by featuring in nearly every major breakaway throughout the three week race.

While the UAE Tour’s parcours is not mountainous enough to complement the riding style that Ciccone is best known for, his gutsy riding may be enough to propel him up the GC. 

Wilco Kelderman

Wilco Kelderman is nothing if not consistent. The Sunweb GC hopeful has a long history of top five and top ten placings to his name. His results make him a clear contender at the UAE Tour, but despite years of strong performances, Kelderman has not won a major GC race since the Tour of Denmark in 2013.

Following the departure of Tom Dumoulin, Sunweb has a large vacancy to fill in their GC lineup and Kelderman appears keen to step up and fill it. While Kelderman finished a characteristic fifth place at the recently concluded Tour de la Provence, he was one of the major animators in the mountains, showing that he is kicking off 2020 with form and motivation.

With one stage race already under his belt, Kelderman will have a leg up on the competition in the UAE. A GC win would change the course of his career and the prospects of Team Sunweb.