It’s less than five weeks until the historic UCI Road World Championships - Doha 2016 kick off in Qatar’s capital, and riders from all over the globe are preparing for the pinnacle of the cycling season, dreaming of winning a prestigious rainbow jersey in Doha.
The riders will be competing for one of the twelve rainbow jerseys that will be awarded between October 9 and 16 to distinguish the UCI World Champions of different cycling specialities and categories. And the Qatari cyclists are no exception to this.
A group of riders of all ages from Qatar travelled to the Slovenian city of Novo Mesto in the first week of July, one of cycling’s heartlands. The training camp provides training and racing in a perfect environment to grow as cyclists.
The selected Qatari riders, led by Ahmed Elbourdainy, are remarkably improving during these weeks in Europe. They are racing most weekends in Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and neighbouring countries, facing strong competitors from all over Europe.
In addition to the competition experience, the riders are able to finetune their bike-handling skills due to the irregular European roads, something very important for riding within a bunch of riders, as often happens in cycling. The training camp is being directed and supervised by Qatari former cyclist Tareq Esmaili. After claiming several National Championship titles in both the Road Race and Individual Time Trial, Esmaili recently retired from racing in order to coach younger Qatari riders.
The Qatari national team’s stay in Europe will go on until October 1, when it will come back to Doha in order to take part in the UCI Road World Championships – Doha 2016.
Bringing together the world’s best male and female road cyclists in the Elite, Under-23 and Junior categories for the time trial and road race, Doha 2016 is the first ever UCI Road World Championship to be held in the Middle East. Twelve titles of UCI World Champion will be awarded during the historic event.