On the final day of the UAE Tour in Jebel Hafeet, in the battle for the stage win and the red jersey, overall runner-up Luke Plapp (Ineos Grenadiers) was mostly focused on his goals, although he was not oblivious to everything that was happening around him.

As Plapp explained after the race, in his first WorldTour GC podium contender, his strategy was to take on the critical final climb of the race at his own pace and see how far he could go with it. And that strategy generally worked.

Plapp took on the climb, sometimes alone, sometimes in a group of one or two, after the final stage winner, Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates), fell off midway up the climb when he went all the way through. He eventually finished in sixth place, just behind GC rival Pero Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious), and waited to see what the final standings would be.

He soon learned that he was still in second place overall, just one second behind Yates and four seconds behind Bilbao in fourth, behind Remco Evenpole (Sourdal-Quickstep). It was a hard-fought battle, but the Australian national champion earned his first World Tour stage race podium finish. ''I'm very happy,'' he said. [In the time trial, I had to pace myself as much as I could. [Honestly, I think Yatesy was unbeatable today. So I'm really happy to hold on to second place; I'm really happy to hold on to second place.

"As you can see, every second mattered, and it showed the importance of the bonus sprint seconds we got on the first day. That was the difference between second and third place on the podium."

Plapp knew that UAE Team Emirates would speed up on the climbs, but he stuck to his strategy on the climbs. He said, "I was mentally prepared, but I didn't want to go too deep. But I knew it wouldn't be good to go too deep." [But like I said before, there was no race there. But like I said before, there was no race there.

The UAE Tour was always a challenge, he said, learning several times from Adam Yates from 2022, when the two were teammates at Ineos and Yates ran second behind Tadei Pogachar.

"I learned a lot from him. I've been wanting to make this race my goal since last year. So it's great to see it come to fruition," Plapp said.

"It was really good to be able to prepare in the heat of Australia, and the long training in Australia definitely paid off."

Plapp's next stop is Europe, "to get used to the cold winter and prepare for the Volta a Catalunya. And then we'll see how the season goes from there."

"We'll see how the season goes.

"We don't know yet what GC races are planned. It's a strong team with a lot of climbers, so if they race, four or five of them will run well enough to be leaders.

"So at the end of the day, I'm willing to do whatever it takes, whether it's riding the mountains or helping Ethan [Hayter] in a sprint, as long as I can work for someone."