'The sprinters' World Championships are coming': it's official – the 2028 Abu Dhabi course will be one for the fast finishers

We could have all hazarded a guess, but now it has been confirmed that the 2028 Abu Dhabi World Championship will be one for the sprinters.

The construction of an artificial cycling climb at Al Wathba had thrown some off the scent, including Belgian fastman Tim Merlier, who expressed concern that the current generation of sprinters would never get their chance at a rainbow jersey.

But Belgian UCI director Peter van den Abeele this weekend told Belgian outlet Sporza that the sprinters would have their day.

"The flat World Championships are coming," he said. "It will definitely be a sprinters' Worlds."

In fact it will be by decree from the very top: "It was President David Lappartient's request to make it a sprinters' festival. It's been a while since there's been a World Championship for sprinters," Van den Abeele said.

The artificial hill being constructed nearby was for cycle touring purposes, he said, and nothing for riders like Merlier, Jonathan Milan, Jasper Philipsen and Biniam Girmay to worry about.

Merlier had said: “Every generation of sprinters should get at least one real chance at a world title. I fear that chance will never come for me.” And he expressed concern too about the artificial climb which he said could be seen growing bigger every year at the UAE Tour.

It has been nine years since the men's World Championships was won in a big bunch sprint, when Peter Sagan took a third consecutive title on a Bergen course that was far from flat. And it was 10 years ago, in Doha, that the women's Worlds were last decided in the same fashion, when Denmark's Amalie Dideriksen prevailed on a billiard-table-flat Doha course.

Go back 15 years ago or more and flat, sprinters' courses are much more popular. Mark Cavendish took GB's first Worlds win since Tom Simpson in 1965 in Copenhagen, and Giorgia Bronzini won the women's race, also in a bunch sprint. Then there was 2002 on the Zolder motor racing circuit, won by Mario Cipollini, and Spaniard Oscar Freire's sprint victory in Lisbon the year before that – though neither of these events ended in a bunch sprint for the women.