Tour of Oman. Alexander Kristoff wins for the third time - all good things come in threes. pubblicato il 19/02/2017

Tour of Oman. Alexander Kristoff wins for the third time - all good things come in threes.

 

Team KATUSHA ALPECIN leader Alexander Kristoff put the finishing touch in the Tour of Oman, taking a nice victory in the final stage of the race (The Wave Muscat – Matrah Corniche, 130,5 k). Kristoff repeated his 2016 win at the same finish location and has now already seven Oman stage wins on his palmares. The Norvegian rider took the third win in the 2017 edition of the Tour of Oman and his fourth victory of the season .

In the final sprint Kristoff overpassed Italian Sascha Modolo (UAE Abu Dhabi) and Romanian Michael Eduard Grosu (Nippo-Vini Fantini).

„It was today one of the windiest days in a long time in Oman and we knew it would be hard to control the race. We were lucky however as also the BMC Team tried to control the race for the GC leader Hermans. At the end they tried to win with the late attack of Greg Van Avermaet. We did not control the whole race but we did our main work in the final. Luckily I had my teammates to support me in the local laps. Especially Marco Haller did an amazing job in the last two kilometers. He brought me in a good position for the sprint. With 150 meters to go I was second and there was a really strong headwind. The last 150 meters felt like 300 meters but in the end I managed to win and I am really happy to win my third stage in the Tour of Oman 2017!“- said Alexander Kristoff.

Team KATUSHA ALPECIN started to control the race from the very first kilometers. The breakaway of the day never had a too big gap, while with 7 k to go the break was completely neutralized. In the final kilometers however hard work was still to be done, as some riders tried their luck attacking.

With the three stage wins, Alexander Kristoff secured the green jersey of the points classification. The winner of the final general classification became Belgian rider Ben Hermans from BMC. Second place in GC took Rui Faria da Costa from UAE Abu Dhabi (+0.22), while the final podium was completed by Fabio Aru (Astana) (+0.35). The best KATUSHA ALPECIN rider in the general classification is Rein Taaramäe with a 28th place (+5.22).

Now the team around Alexander Kristoff is really focused on the coming classic season: „In the Belgian races Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne we have also ambitions. Me favorite now? We have other good riders in the team too as Tony Martin and Baptiste Planckaert… Anyway I am happy about my Oman campaign. 3 victories and really nice weather which was perfect to train and to race. We had also good climbs. I needed those climbs too for my classics preparation. I need to suffer on training. It was good that I could go deep here. We had a high level race, it was the perfect preparation for our Spring campaign.”

„The whole team can be proud. The riders did an amazing job over the days here in Oman. These victories should give us the necessary self confidence for the upcoming classics,“ added team director Torsten Schmidt.

 

Photo credit: (c) Tim De Waele




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