Viviani produced another stunning performance in this year's racing calendar to impressively take the overall Dubai Tour 2018 victory, pipping Astana's Magnus Cort Nielsen and Bahrain-Merida's Sonny Colbrelli to the title.
General Classification - Top 5:
- Elia Viviani (ITA) | Quick-Step Floors
- Magnus Cort Nielsen (DEN) | Astana Pro Team | + 0:00:12
- Sonny Colbrelli (ITA) | Bahrain-Merida | + 0:00:14
- Jean-Pierre Drucker (LUX) | BMC Racing | + 0:00:24
- Rick Zabel (GER) | Katusha-Alpecin | + 0:00:24
Viviani will be no doubt in jubilation over how his move from Team Sky to Quick-Step is taking shape. He dominated in the Tour Down Under a week ago, and is now showing that he can compete with the world's best sprinters and that he will be a force to be reckoned with in the Grand Tours later this year.
Viviani has stayed humble and has stated that 'he'll need bigger tours to prove he's one of the best sprinters'; but with the strength of Quick-Step's expert lead-out train, and Viviani's work on his own sprinting ability and strike rate - I think he is well established as one of the Top 5 sprinters right now.
Under Team Sky, Viviani's Stage win ambitions were often, if not always, secondary to the team's main aim of General Classification victories. The team never tend to take a sprinter to a Grand Tour, and probably never will in the future. With Marcel Kittel moving from Quick-Step to Katusha-Alpecin at the end of last year, Quick-Step have employed Viviani to replace him. Since then everything has clicked into place between the team and rider, and his decision to leave Team Sky has definitely been more than validated.
Viviani marked 10 victories under Team Sky in 2017, and he is well on his way to beating that tally already - and it's only February with the Grand Tours still to come. Definitely, a rider to keep your eyes on for the Points Classification jerseys and sprint-stage wins!
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