After what has been a sensational 2025 so far, UAE Team Emirates-XRG turn their attentions to the big one with the 112th Tour de France set to begin in Lille on Saturday.
Leading the charge over the 3,339km route will once again be Slovenian superstar Tadej Pogacar who is looking to retain the crown he won for a third time last year.
Pogacar's hunger for titles has shown no sign of easing up, with the 26-year-old having triumphed in six races this year, including the UAE Tour and Liege-Bastogne-Liege – each for a third time – while also securing a first Criterium du Dauphine victory in June.
It means Pogacar goes into the cycling's most famous race a clear favourite as he chases a General Classification win that would bring him level with British rider Chris Froome on four wins overall.
If he arrives in Paris on July 27 as champion again, it would leave him behind only Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, who all have a record five Tour victories.
And only seven riders have won more Tour de France stages than Pogacar's 17, which puts him joint-eighth on the all-time list, level with Frenchman Jean Alavoine, albeit with some way to go to match Manx sprinter Mark Cavendish's 35 stage victories.
“I’m excited for the Tour to start,” the 2024 triple-crown winner Pogacar told The National ahead of Saturday's 184.9km opening stage in northern France.
“I’m lucky to have had close to the perfect preparation this year; everything has gone really smoothly, especially coming off a great altitude camp with my teammates.
“The vibes in the team are amazing right now, and that gives me a lot of confidence.”
French cycling legend Hinault is confident Pogacar will eventually go on to break his record for Tour victories.
“For me, yes, he is the favourite, unless he has a major breakdown, but I don't believe that at all,” Hinault, 70, told AFP.
“When you see what he was able to do in the Dauphine, he was in control, he did what he wanted, when he wanted.
“Pogacar, when he sees that he has the chance to pull the trigger, he pulls the trigger – a bit like Eddy [Merckx].
“When he attacks, as he did at the world championships, with 100 kilometres to go, everyone says, 'what a stupid thing to do'. At the end, he won. And that's fabulous to see.”
It has not just been Pogacar enjoying a memorable campaign so far. UAE Team Emirates as a whole have been in scorching form, with an impressive 55 victories secured in 2025.
And it is an impressive squad supporting Pogacar at this year's Tour. Trusted British lieutenant Adam Yates returns to marshal the mountains and shield his leader through the gruelling sections.
Portuguese rider Joao Almeida enters the race in the form of his life, having secured overall wins in the Tour de Romandie, Tour of the Basque Country and, just last week, the Tour de Suisse.
Hometown hero Pavel Sivakov and Ecuadorian national champion Jhonatan Narvaez have the potential to shine on the short, steep ascents that could define the early stages, while Marc Soler returns to the lineup ready to continue his role as the team’s versatile workhorse, dependable on both the flat and in the hills.
Belgian national champion Tim Wellens and German powerhouse Nils Politt round out the squad, tasked with controlling breakaways and guiding the team across the valleys.
But, as always, victory at Le Tour will not come easily, and battling Pogacar for yellow will be three all-too familiar faces in the peloton.
Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard, a two-time Tour de France winner, will be hungry to reclaim his crown after being overpowered by Pogacar last year when he had just returned to racing following a horrific crash in the Tour of the Basque Country.
Belgian double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel will be hoping to rediscover his best form after struggling in the latter stages at the Dauphine, while Slovenian veteran and five-time Grand Tour winner Primoz Roglic rounds off cycling’s “big four”.
This year's Tour – which never leaves French soil for the first time since 2020 – will consist of seven flat stages, six hilly challenges, and six mountain days, including one individual and one mountain time trial.
After starts in Florence, Bilbao and Copenhagen, cycling's most prestigious race returns to its roots with an old school itinerary favouring climbers.
“We decided to bring the Tour home, it was high time after all the foreign starts,” said race director Christian Prudhomme.
A total of 184 riders from 23 teams will gather in Lille for the Grand Depart in a race that consists of 21 stages before reaching the finish line in Paris. It remains to be seen whether Pogacar can once again be the man in yellow on the Champs-Elysees.
Stuck in a job without a pay rise? Here's what to do
Chris Greaves, the managing director of Hays Gulf Region, says those without a pay rise for an extended period must start asking questions – both of themselves and their employer.
“First, are they happy with that or do they want more?” he says. “Job-seeking is a time-consuming, frustrating and long-winded affair so are they prepared to put themselves through that rigmarole? Before they consider that, they must ask their employer what is happening.”
Most employees bring up pay rise queries at their annual performance appraisal and find out what the company has in store for them from a career perspective.
Those with no formal appraisal system, Mr Greaves says, should ask HR or their line manager for an assessment.
“You want to find out how they value your contribution and where your job could go,” he says. “You’ve got to be brave enough to ask some questions and if you don’t like the answers then you have to develop a strategy or change jobs if you are prepared to go through the job-seeking process.”
For those that do reach the salary negotiation with their current employer, Mr Greaves says there is no point in asking for less than 5 per cent.
“However, this can only really have any chance of success if you can identify where you add value to the business (preferably you can put a monetary value on it), or you can point to a sustained contribution above the call of duty or to other achievements you think your employer will value.”
Karwaan
Producer: Ronnie Screwvala
Director: Akarsh Khurana
Starring: Irrfan Khan, Dulquer Salmaan, Mithila Palkar
€39 million: Liverpool agreed a fee, including add-ons, in the region of €39m (nearly Dh176m) to sign Salah from Roma last year. The exchange rate at the time meant that cost the Reds £34.3m - a bargain given his performances since.
13: The 25-year-old player was not a complete stranger to the Premier League when he arrived at Liverpool this summer. However, during his previous stint at Chelsea, he made just 13 Premier League appearances, seven of which were off the bench, and scored only twice.
57: It was in the 57th minute of his Liverpool bow when Salah opened his account for the Reds in the 3-3 draw with Watford back in August. The Egyptian prodded the ball over the line from close range after latching onto Roberto Firmino's attempted lob.
7: Salah's best scoring streak of the season occurred between an FA Cup tie against West Brom on January 27 and a Premier League win over Newcastle on March 3. He scored for seven games running in all competitions and struck twice against Tottenham.
3: This season Salah became the first player in Premier League history to win the player of the month award three times during a term. He was voted as the division's best player in November, February and March.
40: Salah joined Roger Hunt and Ian Rush as the only players in Liverpool's history to have scored 40 times in a single season when he headed home against Bournemouth at Anfield earlier this month.
30: The goal against Bournemouth ensured the Egyptian achieved another milestone in becoming the first African player to score 30 times across one Premier League campaign.
8: As well as his fine form in England, Salah has also scored eight times in the tournament phase of this season's Champions League. Only Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo, with 15 to his credit, has found the net more often in the group stages and knockout rounds of Europe's premier club competition.
Starring: Willem Dafoe, Oscar Isaacs, Mads Mikkelsen
Three stars
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal / Ubisoft Toronto
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows
Release Date: April 10
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area. Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife. Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple. The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”. He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale. Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
UN Panel of Experts found regime secretly sold a fifth of the country's gold reserves.
The panel’s 2017 report followed a trail to West Africa where large sums of cash and gold were hidden by Abdullah Al Senussi, Qaddafi’s former intelligence chief, in 2011.
Cases filled with cash that was said to amount to $560m in 100 dollar notes, that was kept by a group of Libyans in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
A second stash was said to have been held in Accra, Ghana, inside boxes at the local offices of an international human rights organisation based in France.
