Home heroes Kristoff and Boasson Hagen show the way
August 13 th 2015 - 18:53
130 riders took the start of stage 1 in the third edition of the Arctic Race of Norway. Seven of them, including five Norwegians, rode away from the peloton after 14 kilometres of racing: Maxime Cam (Bretagne-Séché Environnement), Jens Wallays (Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise), Max Kørner (Ringeriks-Kraft), Marius Hafsås (FixIT.no), Vegard Stake Laengen (Joker), Håvard Blikra (Coop-Øster Hus) and Jon Soeveras Breivold (Frøy-Bianchi). They reached an advantage of seven minutes over the peloton at the first intermediate sprint located at Evenes airport in the entrance of the county of Nordland (km 40). Blikra passed first on the line ahead of Stake Laengen and Cam. At half way into the race, the time difference was down to 4.30.
Stake Laengen, a worthy King of the Mountain
On the first crossing of the finish line back in Harstad with another 66km to be covered, the second intermediate sprint delivered the same result as the first one with Blikra preceding Stake Laengen and Cam. By then, the time gap was reduced to 2.30 as the teams of the sprinters, namely Katusha, Lampre-Merida and Europcar, pulled the peloton. Stake Laengen secured the first salmon jersey – and the salmon worth 10,000 NOK – after passing first atop Balteskardet (km 94) and second atop Kvæfjordeidet (km 155.5). He attacked with 15km to go. Among the seven breakaway riders, only Hafsås was able to come across and accompany him until the lanky climber from Team Joker rode away solo again 9km before the end.
Kristoff in the lead for the first time
As Stake Laengen was brought back inside 5km to go, Davide Malacarne (Astana) tried his luck but it was all together for the last two kilometers of racing. Reduced to five men prior to the start due to Anton Vorobyev's ribs injury, Katusha positioned Kristoff at perfection at the bottom of the uphill finish. The Stavanger-based sprinter chose the right side of the road while Boasson Hagen was on the left. Kristoff powered to victory to lead the Arctic Race of Norway for the first as he missed out on the very first edition due to pneumonia and won stage 2 last year while Lars-Petter Nordhaug was still in the blue jersey after taking the epic inaugural stage to the North Cape.