Glava Tour of Norway: Kristoff wins his first duel with Boasson Hagen

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Alexander Kristoff scored his second win of the season, claiming the opening stage in the Glava Tour of Norway. The Katusha rider beat national rival Edvald Boasson Hagen (Team Sky) in a sprint finish.

"Edvald is a great rider," commented his former teammate from the team Maxbo-Bianchi in 2007. “He’s one of the best in the world, and probably the best behind Peter Sagan for this kind of sprint finish. That’s why it means a lot to me to beat him here but I wasn’t sure until the final lap that I could do it. I didn’t feel very good in the climbs earlier in the stage.”

“It’s nothing new that Alexander is a strong sprinter," echoed Boasson Hagen about his compatriot who won the bronze medal at the Olympic road race.

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“I was expecting him to do well today. My team prepared the sprint really well, so did Blanco and Katusha. I got an excellent lead-out but I started sprinting on a gear that was possibly too big when I came into the wind.”

Kristoff was also full of praise for his Russian team albeit being left alone 350 metres before the finishing line.

“I tried to stay close to Edvald and we started at the same time," he said. “We sprinted head-to-head. I wasn’t convinced that I could win until 50 metres to go.”

Kristoff and Boasson Hagen actually know each other well as they both come from the same development program run for years by Birger Hungerholdt who is also the organizer of the Glava Tour of Norway.

They might have different goals this week. The sprinter from Katusha announced that he eyed stage victories in the first three days while the versatile rider from Team Sky intends to repeat the overall win he got last year when the race will be contested on a more mountainous terrain around Lillehammer near his home on Saturday.

That’s why Boasson Hagen didn’t analyze stage 1 as a defeat. “With the time bonus [for second place], I have six seconds more in my favor than before the start and that’s the kind of benefit I was hoping for," said the Norwegian national champion who will also celebrate his 27th birthday at the race on a very special occasion for the whole country as May 17 is the national day.

Being so motivated on home soil, the two local stars and the Blanco team, working for Norway’s third favorite Lars-Petter Nordhaug and sprinter Theo Bos who finished fourth, didn’t leave much room for the potential success of the breakaway that was formed after 27 kilometres of racing with six riders at the front: Amets Txurruka (Caja Rural), Ronny Martias (Sojasun), Bob Schoonbroodt (De Rijke-Shanks), Alexander Gingsjö (Team People4you), Vegard Bugge (Joker-Merida) and Fillip Eidsheim (Oster Hus).

They had a maximum advantage of eight minutes and Txurruka was the last man to be caught with 10 kilometers to go. “At 40 to go with a lead of four minutes, I even thought we could make it," said the Basque rider who just won the Vuelta Asturias last weekend. “I wanted to profit from my good form and I’ll give it another go before the end of the Tour of Norway.”