It was a day to remember for UAE Team Emirates-XRG as their Belgian rider Tim Wellens won the 15th stage of the Tour de France, even as star champion Tadej Pogacar retained the overall lead.
Wellens won a baking and hilly stage at the walled citadel of Carcassonne as his UAE teammate Pogacar remained ahead of the pack.
The 34-year-old Belgian champion Wellens has won stages on the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a Espana, while this was a fifth stage win on the 2025 Tour de France for UAE Team Emirates, Pogacar having already won four himself.
Wellens was in a four-man leading group with Michael Storer, Quinn Simmons and Victor Campeanaerts as they climbed the three kilometre incline Pas du Sant.
Carlos Rodriguez, Warren Barguil, Aleks Vlasov and Alexey Lutsenko were chasing, and Wellens waited for the trailing group to catch up before he attacked with 43.5km to go, knowing his rivals would find it hard to react with the downhill to come.
The Belgian rider finished one minute and 28 seconds ahead of Campeanaerts and 1:36 ahead of Julian Alaphilippe, Wout van Aert, and Axel Laurance.
Pogacar and his closest general classification rivals, Jonas Vingegaard and Florian Lipowitz, finished in a large group 6:07 behind Wellens.
Pogacar maintained his overall lead of 4:13 over Vingegard and 7:53 over German rider Lipowitz.
After a mass fall early on with Lipowitz and Vingegaard involved, the Pogacar group raced on, leaving two-time winner Vingegaard and a group of 30 riders to exhaust themselves catching up.
Pogacar, aiming for his fourth title in the iconic race, entered the Pyrenees on Thursday tucked in at second to surprise yellow jersey Ben Healy but emerged with two more stage wins and a four minutes advantage on top of the overall standings.
Monday is the final rest day before the 2025 edition soars into the Alps on Tuesday's stage 16 with the 15.8km ascent of Mont Ventoux at 7.9 per cent gradient to its 1901m high summit.
After the stage, Wellens celebrated a special win.
“It is a very special victory. Everyone knows the Tour de France and everyone wants to ride the Tour de France, and not many people win at the Tour de France, so it is a very beautiful victory,” said Wellens.
“I felt super good before the stage. Before the stage, Nils [Politt] and me were laughing a little bit that we would go in the break, suddenly there was a crash. I kept on attacking and followed one move, and I was in the breakaway,” Wellens said.
“On the climb, it exploded again, and then on the last climb of the day, I felt really good. I saw the others also felt good, but I knew I had to go solo. At the top of the climb, I knew I had my moment and had the legs to keep it until the end.”
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Countries offering golden visas
UK
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Germany
Investing or establishing a business in Germany offers you a residence permit, which eventually leads to citizenship. The investment must meet an economic need and you have to have lived in Germany for five years to become a citizen.
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The chef's advice
Troy Payne, head chef at Abu Dhabi’s newest healthy eatery Sanderson’s in Al Seef Resort & Spa, says singles need to change their mindset about how they approach the supermarket.
“They feel like they can’t buy one cucumber,” he says. “But I can walk into a shop – I feed two people at home – and I’ll walk into a shop and I buy one cucumber, I’ll buy one onion.”
Mr Payne asks for the sticker to be placed directly on each item, rather than face the temptation of filling one of the two-kilogram capacity plastic bags on offer.
The chef also advises singletons not get too hung up on “organic”, particularly high-priced varieties that have been flown in from far-flung locales. Local produce is often grown sustainably, and far cheaper, he says.
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-final, first leg
Barcelona v Liverpool, Wednesday, 11pm (UAE).
Second leg
Liverpool v Barcelona, Tuesday, May 7, 11pm
Games on BeIN Sports
First Person
Richard Flanagan
Chatto & Windus
Mountain%20Boy
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David Haye record
Total fights: 32
Wins: 28
Wins by KO: 26
Losses: 4
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more from Janine di Giovanni
Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
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The biog
Family: He is the youngest of five brothers, of whom two are dentists.
Celebrities he worked on: Fabio Canavaro, Lojain Omran, RedOne, Saber Al Rabai.
Where he works: Liberty Dental Clinic
