Ben Hermans meets race ambassador’s expectations
August 15 th 2015 - 18:59
125 riders took the start of stage 3 in Finnsnes before paying a visit to the beautiful Senja island. Six riders rode away from the gun: Herman Dahl and Fridtjof Røinås (Sparebanken Sør), Marius Hafsås (FixIT.no), Håvard Blikra (Coop-Øster Hus), Jon Breivold (Frøy-Bianchi) and Chris Williams (Novo Nordisk). There was no reaction from the bunch, so the difference was superior to six minutes after only 20km of racing. Blikra won the first intermediate sprint at Slettemøen (km 14) ahead of Røinås and Hafsås. The same three riders crested the first categorized hill Krokelvvatnet (km 40) in the same order. A maximum time gap of 6.30 was recorded after 50km were covered. Astana, the first team involved in setting the pace of the pack, received the help of BMC and IAM Cycling. As he outsprinted Røinås again atop Mefjordbotneidet (km 79.5), Blikra virtually became the King of the Mountains ahead of the highly expected uphill finish in Målselv.
Blikra the last man to surrender
Diabetic cyclist Chris Williams sent a nice message to the millions of followers of the Novo Nordisk team as he claimed the second hot spot sprint at Grunnvåg (km 101.5). Astana and IAM Cycling stabilized the gap between the six leaders and the peloton around 3.30. BMC returned to work and the deficit was down to two minutes with 30km to go. Continental team Joker was next to move to the front. Blikra who had scored enough points to take over from his team-mate August Jensen in the lead of the KOM competition was the last man to surrender 8km before the end. Several teams showed their ambitions in the lead up to the 3.7km long final climb: Joker, Lampre-Merida, Astana, BMC, IAM and Katusha.
Taaramäe on the attack
Taaramäe attacked just inside the last two kilometres after passing a head wind section. Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha) and Mathias Frank (IAM) remained pretty close to him. The Estonian rode away again with 1.5km to go but he stayed under the threat of Frank and a BMC trio formed of Ben Hermans, Silvan Dillier and Dylan Teuns. Hermans paced himself at perfection to deprive Taaramäe of the victory in the last 200 metres. Race ambassador Thor Hushovd had named his former BMC team-mate as the hot favorite for the Arctic Race of Norway along with Taaramäe. The Belgian handled the pressure really well. He can eye the final victory as he leads the overall classification by 7 seconds over Taaramäe and 24 seconds over Boasson Hagen who can keep his ambitions alive in the conclusive stage expected to be a very spectacular one in Narvik.