Whilst most of the Swedish headlines have been taken up by the Sony Ericsson success story, the best individual riders have been elsewhere. Thomas Lovkvist has been seen riding unselflessly in the service of Thomas Dekker at the Tour de France, meanwhile Fredrik Kessiakoff has floundered slightly in the CTour.
The course is described as hilly but is hardly testing:
The 17 riders do little to excite the small amount of spectactors that line the circuit, with 75km to go Thomas Lovkvist simply rides away.
Fredrik Kessiakoff looks around at the Sony team but they are not really chasing and so he launches a pursuit.
With 1 circuit left Lovkvist holds a 69 second lead on Kessiakoff and 3.25 on the lax peleton. The protour luxury domestique is way too strong to be closed down and wins this rather lacking in excitement Road race comfortably.
Not that he or his Philips team will be complaining.
Well Lovkvist took the RR, though he will be hard pressed to replicate that in the time trial.
The battle here is a Sony double header both
Fredy Johansson
and Viktor Renang
Look determined to go well and indeed they are very closely matched on the time checks. It is Renang who just shades the first check but Johansson claws it back slightly by the second check.
It is a largely windless day and what little wind there is dies before the end as Fredy Johannson hits the line in 1.05.39, one would assume he had done enough but no Renang surprises by holding out by the tiniest amount, winning by one second.
