Arctic Race of Norway: Mathieu van der Poel wins stage 1

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Mathieu van der Poel (Corenden-Circus) picked up where he left off four months ago when he sprinted to victory on the opening stage of the Arctic Race of Norway. The Dutchman hadn't raced on the road since winning Amstel Gold Race in April, but he hit his stride immediately, beating his fellow countryman Danny van Poppel (Jumbo-Visma) to the line in Leknes to take the stage honours and the overall lead.

Just days after victory at the mountain bike World Cup in Lenzerheide, this was the umpteenth demonstration of Van der Poel's remarkable versatility. The 24-year-old toggles between road, mountain bike and cyclo-cross with remarkable ease, winning on all terrains. This was his sixth win on the road in 2019, and in just 16 days of racing. Despite his relative inexperience, Van der Poel is, with ample justification, among the very top tier of favourites for next month's road Worlds in Yorkshire.

Van der Poel showed guile as well as strength in the finale to claim the honours here. He was part of the decisive 33-man move that forged clear with a little under 100km remaining after a blisteringly quick start to proceedings, and he maintained a watching brief when the escapees began to attack one another in the finale 30km or so.

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Come the last 10km, however, Van der Poel weighed up the odds and realised that the four-man delegation from Jumbo-Visma was likely to try to keep the fragmenting group together for a sprint. He carefully marked Van Poppel in the finale, and Jumbo-Visma duly pegged back a late, solo effort from an impressive Steve Cummings (Dimension Data) within sight of the line.

"At the end I had to gamble that they were closing the gap. Astana had riders as well, but it was a difficult situation," Van der Poel said afterwards. "With 7 or 8km to go, I had in mind that I was waiting for the sprint. I didn't have many options, and from there, it was about timing my sprint perfectly."

Van der Poel did that and more. Just as Cummings was brought back, he unsheathed a vicious acceleration that carried him a length clear of Van Poppel to take the stage win and the overall lead. Van Poppel took second ahead of Andrea Pasqualon (Wanty-Groupe Gobert), while Bart Declercq (Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise) came home in fourth place.

In the overall standings, Van der Poel has a lead of two seconds over Alexey Lutsenko (Astana), whose day-long aggression was rewarded with bonus seconds at the intermediate sprints, while Van Poppel is third at four seconds. "It's going to be very hard to defend the jersey, but we'll see," said Van der Poel.

How it unfolded

There was no gentle introduction to proceedings in Å, with attack after attack pinging off the front of the peloton in the opening kilometres. The soaring average speed through the first two hours of racing stretched the bunch to breaking point, and a group of 33 – including Van der Poel, Lutsensko, Cummings, Enrico Gasparotto (Dimension Data), Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha-Alpecin) and Warren Barguil (Arkea-Samsic) – forged clear with 98km remaining.

Although unwieldy in size, the group's collective strength was enough to carry it clear of the peloton and the move may yet prove pivotal in the battle for final overall victory. The escapees maintained their entente deep into the stage, but their alliance of circumstance finally began to fray in the final 30km or so, with Lutsensko especially active off the front.

The Kazakhstani was the lone leader when the race came through the finish area for the penultimate time with 25km remaining, and he was later joined by Cummings, Lilian Calmejane (Total-Direct Energie) and Pascal Eenkhoorn (Jumbo-Visma). Cummings led that quintet over the top of Hagskaret Summit, but Katusha-Alpecin's pursuit pegged them back over the other side.

Gasparotto and Krists Neilands (Israel Cycling Academy) were the next men to go on the offensive before Hugo Houle (Astana) restored some order to the group on behalf of Lutsenko and Magnus Cort.

With 8.5km to go, Cummings instigated another move, bringing Cort, Barguil, Markus Hoelgaard (Uno-X Norwegian Development Team) and the Jumbo-Visma duo of Amund Grøndahl Jansen and Flors De Tier with him. The effort was doomed, however, by a combination of Cort's orders to wait for Lutsenko and one long turn from Van der Poel behind.

Cummings cruised clear alone with 5km to go and the Briton briefly looked as though he might defy the Jumbo-Visma chase effort when he stretched his lead out to 11 seconds with 2km to go. He was still leading beneath the flamme rouge, but at day's end, he would have to settle for the consolation of the king of the mountains jersey. Jumbo-Visma's led the remnants of the break to his rear wheel, before Van der Poel scorched clear to take the win.

"It was a very hard race. The pace never dropped," Van der Poel said. "After 3 hours, the average speed was still 50kph. It was really hard, full gas all day. I kind of like it like that." 

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