Tuesday February 18 to Saturday February 22

The race

With the sprinters taking centre stage early in the month, the Tour of Oman will provide some of the world’s best climbers with their first real challenges of the season and a high-class field will be competing in Oman. Chris Froome (Team Sky) enters as defending champion having won the race last year to kick-start his Tour de France preparations. With a balanced parcours and some tough climbs towards the end of the week, there will be opportunities for the hard-men to fine-tune preparations for the Classics season too.

The six stages are broadly similar to last season with a stage three finish in Al Bustan, just after the climb of Al Jissah, likely to suit any late escapees as it did last year when Peter Sagan won the stage. One slight difference is the order of stages four and five however, with the undulating circuit to the Ministry of Housing – a stage won last year by Chris Froome – making up stage four with the queen stage, finishing atop Green Mountain, now stage five. Having been the opposite way around last year, Froome claimed the leader’s jersey after finishing second on Green Mountain and consolidated it with victory the following day. This year’s slightly reworked route is therefore likely to place greater emphasis on the summit finish with a flat stage the following day unlikely to cause any damage to the overall leader.

The contenders

As defending champion, Froome starts among the favourites for the race and will be backed by a fiercely strong line-up including Sergio Henao, David Lopez and new-signing Mikel Nieve. A stage winner last year, Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) – with trusty lieutenant Daniel Moreno alongside him – is likely to be a major contender too, particularly with Green Mountain now featuring on the penultimate day. Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), Andy and Frank Schleck (Trek Factory Racing), Jurgen van den Broeck (Lotto-Belisol), Rigoberto Uran (Omega Pharma-Quickstep), Domenico Pozzovivo (Ag2r-La Mondiale) and Roman Kreuziger (Tinkoff-Saxo) will all also be keen to gain an early boost ahead of their varying ambitions for the coming months.

After leading Simon Gerrans to Tour Down Under victory, South African Daryl Impey (Orica-GreenEDGE) also gets his own chance to lead the Australian team, and he could be backed by rising British star Adam Yates. Yates is down provisionally as a reserve for the race, but after an 11th place overall on his professional debut at Tour de San Luis – which also won him the young riders classification – the Bury-born ace could play an important role if selected.