Denmark NC - always worth watching! An interesting road race - featuring a loop around Silkeborg (195km in total) - will hopefully make for a thrilling race: short but not too steep climbs and a flat finish can actually favor either the puncheurs or a hill-surviving sprinter..
..so at least no chance for Alex Rasmussen..
32 riders (let's still include Rasmussen, to be fair) will battle for the victory and the Danish team B&O is obviously the team under pressure:
featuring even two teams (13 riders in total), B&O is expected to show something. Same goes for Vueling (5 riders). Other riders like Sorensen (Festina), Breschel (AMEX), Klostergaard (Swedbank) or Bochman (VW) will need clever tactis to outplay this dominating teams.
Vueling puts some more pressure on B&O and manages to put a rider into the 4-men-breakaway group, that went rather late into race:
Sterobo (Vueling)
Jorgensen (Risa)
Mortensen (Koenigsegg)
Nielsen (Repsol) lead by 3'30" with 143km remaining..
B&O though looks like they can control the situation halfway through the race:
68km to go and the gap is just at 4'30" and already starts to getting smaller..
And yes, Team B&O managed to narrow the gap - 17km to go and the early escapees hold on to a now 40"-gap and we see the first favorites attacking:
Sorensen (Festina) tries to take advantage of B&O's work and also to bridge the gap to the leading four!
No luck yet, as he's brought back by the bunch quickly: 12km remaining and with the early breakaway being caught as well, it's an open race with still 24 riders in the now leading peloton!
Next in line trying to escape: Steensen (B&O)! He attacks the bunch 11km before finish and may hope to survive now that his team obviously won't chase anymore..
Empty-handed! It's not only B&O here, so the favorites themselves worked hard to reel Steensen in!
6km remaining, Guldhammer (B&O) and again Sorensen pull the strings hard at the very front of the peloton, which is still at 24 riders and only the worst "climbers" being dropped!
That's good news for the sprinters, who managed to stay in this group! Guldhammer had a very late attempt just before the bunch sprint kicked off and he's quickly overtaken by two of the fastest men in this group:
Breschel (AMEX)
Kvist (Puma) kick off their sprints 2km to the line, establishing a small gap quickly!
Today's profile always suited Breschel very well and the veteran seems to deliver, yet dropping Kvist easily on the finishing stretch..
And he holds on to a decent gap to take out the Road Race ahead of Kvist and Lars Bak! An impressive sprint by Breschel and a great way to end the season.
Denmark NC - always worth watching! An interesting road race - featuring a loop around Silkeborg (195km in total) - will hopefully make for a thrilling race: short but not too steep climbs and a flat finish can actually favor either the puncheurs or a hill-surviving sprinter..
