Im good in the minor turs like paris-nice and vuelta ciclista a mallorca. And im currently defending my title of the Tour of Australia with Luis Leon Sanchez. After 4/6stages he has the lead by 44seconds over Tony Martin.
We declared from the start that we wanted a monopoly of National Championships in the North. We have all the champions on the team, but has never actually won all the races. This is the time to realize that ambition!
Norsk Mesterskap, Landeveisritt
Our strategy for this race was to let everyone except Edvald chase the breakaways and then have Eddy fresh should it end in a bunch sprint.
That resulted in a decisive break of 9 riders. Kristoff and Tonning for us, three Øster Hus riders and two each from Jardar and Joker. It’s hardly a secret that Kristoff is the major favourite in this group...
The lone riders left behind couldn’t agree to form a chase so the nine riders just kept expanding the lead since all of the big teams had at least two guys out front.
With 50 km to go the gap was more than 20 minutes and I told Eddy, Thor and Vegard to start working in the peloton so that the final score sheet won’t look quite as embarrassing.
Tonning delivers Kristoff for a superior sprint win.
Full Results
1
Alexander Kristoff
Volvo - SAS
5h58'27
2
Geir Berg
Joker Merida
s.t.
3
Christer Jensen
Team Øster Hus - Ridley
s.t.
4
Vegard Breen
Jardar Sykling
s.t.
5
Johan Ziesler
Team Øster Hus - Ridley
s.t.
Spoiler
6
Tobias Tonning
Volvo - SAS
s.t.
7
Daniel Gomnes
Jardar Sykling
s.t.
8
Carl Fandin
Joker Merida
s.t.
9
Bjørn Arve Sandberg
Team Øster Hus - Ridley
s.t.
10
Edvald Boasson Hagen
Volvo - SAS
+ 8'52
11
Lars Petter Nordhaug
Team Vodafone
s.t.
12
Thor Hushovd
Volvo - SAS
s.t.
13
Vegard Stake Laengen
Volvo - SAS
+ 10'46
14
Havard Nybö
Joker Merida
s.t.
15
Frederik Wilmann
Christina Watches - Onfone
+ 12'30
16
Vegard Bugge
Jardar Sykling
+ 12'52
17
Sven Erik Bystrøm
Team Øster Hus - Ridley
+ 13'13
18
Adrian Gjølberg
Jardar Sykling
s.t.
19
Ole Haavardsholm
Team Øster Hus - Ridley
s.t.
20
Gabriel Rasch
FDJ - BigMat
s.t.
21
Frans-Leonard Markaskard
Belavia
+ 14'24
22
HÃ¥vard Blikra
Jardar Sykling
s.t.
23
Ingar Stokstad
Team Øster Hus - Ridley
s.t.
24
Eirik Jarlseth
Jardar Sykling
s.t.
25
Magnus Espeland
Team Øster Hus - Ridley
s.t.
26
Sondre Sörtveit
Joker Merida
+ 15'56
27
Stian Remme
Team Øster Hus - Ridley
s.t.
28
Mats Lohne
Jardar Sykling
+ 16'28
29
Tomas Ringberg
Jardar Sykling
+ 17'01
30
Filip Eidsheim
Team Øster Hus - Ridley
s.t.
31
Kristian Dyrnes
Jardar Sykling
s.t.
Danmarksmesterskabet, Linjeløb
In this race we expect both Saxo – Tinkoff and TDC – LRØ Rådgivning to give us a proper run for the jersey.
Michael Rasmussen is riding his last season, but was the first rider to attack today.
Our status in the peloton makes us the team expected to control the breakaways so we had people in front of the peloton pretty much all day to make sure Sobota, Lisson and the two former Volvo-riders Færk Christensen and Brink didn’t get too far away.
The hard pace on the hills had a price for several of our main competitors and with 90 km to go among a group with among others Østergaard and Lander are lost 1’45’’ behind the main peloton.
Things were reunited with 50 km to go and for quite a long time everyone just sat there looking at each other.
Ipsen attacked with 18 km to go and was soon followed by Nicola Aistrup. Not the best prospects as Aistrup is by far the fastest sprinter of the two.
So I told Willy to just stick to the Saxo-riders wheel while Fuglsang, Nielsen, Bøchman and Nicki squeezed up the speed behind and caught the front duo with 10 km to go forming a nine-rider group with 5 Volvo-riders…
Willy is off again on the final climb.
He can’t keep the gap, but Aistrup gets tired enough from the chase to allow Fuglsang to bet him on the line after great work from Bøchman.
A proper team effort allowing Jakob to start his vacation with a proper party!
The Swedish Championships were raced on the same route as the Danish, but with a lot weaker competition for us.
The other teams went all-out attacking right from the start hoping to weaken us, but in fact only managed to eliminate all of their own teammates leaving an 8-rider group with all our five rider, Persson, Ljungblad and Lindgren.
Ljungblad decided to blow all his chances by attacking every five km or so for the first 80 km of the race. Not a very clever way to spend his energy when outnumbered…
When the finish line is only 20 km away Lindgren and Kessiakoff has been lost behind the group due to crashes.
We continue the steady pulling in the front group like we have all day and going in to the last 15 km it looks like Ljungblad and Persson might start cracking soon as well.
Pushing up the speed on the last pass of the hill eliminates Persson leaving Ljungblad alone battling Stevenson, Ludvigsson, Larsson and Löfkvist.
Tobias is the fastest sprinter here so the remaining three riders set him up for an easy win on a day where IKEA will be blaming themselves for making it a hard race right from the start and Ljungblad will be blaming himself for using so much energy throughout the race.
The other teams had enough determination to have made this a difficult race four our quintet, but lacked the race intelligence...
Full Results
1
Tobias Ludvigsson
Volvo - SAS
5h29'52
2
Christofer Stevenson
Volvo - SAS
s.t.
3
Thomas Löfkvist
Volvo - SAS
s.t.
4
Gustav Erik Larsson
Volvo - SAS
s.t.
5
Jonas Ljungblad
SES Astra - Magic-Sportfood.de
s.t.
Spoiler
6
Lucas Persson
DONG Energy - Himmerland
+ 1'00
7
Philip Lindau
Belavia
+ 2'26
8
Johan Lindgren
IKEA Cykling
+ 3'06
9
Fredrik Kessiakoff
Volvo - SAS
+ 4'35
10
Sebastian Balck
DONG Energy - Himmerland
+ 5'14
11
Gunnar Grönlund
IKEA Cykling
s.t.
12
Michael Stevenson
DONG Energy - Himmerland
s.t.
13
Andreas Linden
IKEA Cykling
+ 6'28
14
Lars Andersson
IKEA Cykling
s.t.
15
Linus Dahlberg
IKEA Cykling
+ 7'23
16
Alexander Wetterhall
IKEA Cykling
+ 9'51
17
Hans Jakob Brantmo
IKEA Cykling
+ 15'57
18
HÃ¥kan Nilsson
Atlas Personal - Jakroo
+ 16'40
19
Richard Larsen
IKEA Cykling
+ 18'25
As usual some peculiar racing in Norway and Sweden, but our sense of the special race tactics needed in these races gave us two well-earned victories.
In Denmark we were as usual challenged quite a lot more. Especially Nikola Aistrup looks like he is developing into a top contender in this kind of races...
My danish national road race champs were very interesting. Lars Bak broke away with a long way to go and won by 7minutes. I attacked with my only rider who was breschel a bit later on and he came 2nd by quite a few minutes to third place. Unfortunately he couldnt get near closing the gap to Bak.
Luis Leon Sanchez wrote:
My danish national road race champs were very interesting. Lars Bak broke away with a long way to go and won by 7minutes. I attacked with my only rider who was breschel a bit later on and he came 2nd by quite a few minutes to third place. Unfortunately he couldnt get near closing the gap to Bak.
What DB are you using?
It's a common scenario in countries like Australia and Norway, but at least with the Daily DB I usually find that there's enough CT-teams to help actually keep the racing exciting.
Just see how small differences I could make with the by far strongest team in the race...
Marcovdw: There's the soundtrack for the post-NC BBQ
Edited by Atlantius on 05-08-2013 10:25
The Rider: Thanks. No Icelandic (or Finnish) championship race since there's way to few riders. The champions of these countries will be named at the end of the season based on the CQ-ranking along with a lot of other NC's.
Team Vodafone has failed to find a new British main sponsor and has made a deal with the Spanish Company Santander instead.
In fact the Spanish company has laid a big enough pile of cash for them to overtake the sponsorship with immediate effect fielding their jersey for the first time at the Tour de France start in Roubaix tomorrow.
welker: He will be riding the Vuelta, but his main target this season was the early week-long races, which gave him his current 9th place on the WT-ranking.