Kristoff wins photo-finish sprint in Tour of Norway opening stage
Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) took a photo-finish home victory on the first stage of the Arctic Race of Norway, ahead of John Degenkolb (Giant-Alpecin) and Danny Van Poppel (Sky).
The Norwegian had to start his sprint far behind Degenkolb who was given the perfect lead-out by Søren Kragh Andersen but when the German’s chain started to jump, Kristoff narrowly managed to come around to take the win and the first leader’s jersey.
With the win, Kristoff takes the leader’s jersey with a 3-second advantage over Rast who picked up seven bonus seconds during the stage. The Norwegian should have a chance to make it two in a row in the lumpy second stage. After a flat start, the riders will tackle the category 1 climb of Korgfjellet which will be used in the finale of the third stage too. It averages 6.4km over 8.9km, with the top coming at the 44.5km mark. From there the riders will descend back to flat terrain until they get to the finish line for the first time with 28km to go. Having contested the final intermediate sprint here, the riders will end the race by doing two laps of a 14km circuit. It includes the category 2 climb of Kleivskaret (0.5km, 10%) which comes 10.5km from the finish. From there, the road continues uphill for a few kilometres before a descent leads to the final 4km which are slightly ascending. The final kilometre averages 1.7%.
Tour of Norway 2016 – stage 1 results (Fauske – Rognan):
| 1 | Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) |
4:10:02 |
| 2 | John Degenkolb (Giant-Alpecin) |
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| 3 | Danny Van Poppel (Sky) |
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| 4 | Moreno Hofland (LottoNl-Jumbo) |
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| 5 | Danilo Napolitano (Wanty – Groupe Gobert) |
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| 6 | Niccolo Bonifazio (Trek-Segafredo) |
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| 7 | Ruslan Tleubayev (Astana) |
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| 8 | Ramus Tiller (Ringeriks-Kraft) |
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| 9 | Daniel Oss (BMC) |
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| 10 | Gianni Moscon (Sky) |
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