When Doha first announced its candidacy to host the 2016 World Championships, there were fantastical tales aplenty of plans to construct artificial climbs on a finishing circuit built especially for the occasion.
Perhaps those rumours weren’t altogether far-fetched, considering how skyscrapers seem to spring up almost as quickly as mushrooms on the Doha cityscape, or how, for example, Qatar’s hosting of the Handball World Championships last year was enough to warrant the construction of a new 15,500-seater arena in Lusail.
No matter, two years ago, the head of the Qatar Cycling Federation, Sheikh Khalid Bin Ali Al Thani, confirmed that no such climb would be built and the Worlds course would instead rely on a natural resource – wind – to provide the obstacles.
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On the evidence of Tuesday’s opening stage of the Ladies Tour of Qatar, billed officially as the test event for the 2016 Worlds, however, it seems that the greatest challenge facing riders in October will in fact be the technical nature of the 15-kilometre finishing circuit on the artificial island of the Pearl.
“It was chaotic,” Wiggle-High5’s Chloe Hosking told Cyclingnews after the stage. “I don’t know how many laps of it we’re going to do at Worlds but I hope it’s split up by then.”
Stage 1 of the Ladies Tour of Qatar saw the 90-strong peloton tackle an 80-kilometre opening loop on desert roads that is due to feature on the Worlds course, before completing one lap of the sinuous circuit on the Pearl, an artificial island filled with swanky residential complexes and high-end shops.
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