Not many people know this, but a citytrip to Uppsala is actually the reason why Britney Spears created the song ‘Upps, I did it again’. Let’s hope we don’t see a Toxic sprint today, with everybody playing it clean instead of being some sort of bike Criminal. Womanizer Vanderbiest really wants to win this race, and told domestique Liepins that he’d ‘better Work Bitch’, to which the lead-out sprinter replied that ‘I’m a slave for you’. The race is still anyone’s to win, maybe an outsider like Bogdanovics is simply Stronger than the rest, or a random rider like Stokbro gets Lucky. I can feel all of you thinking that I’ve talked too much already, but no worries, the race will soon commence as I was Born to make you happy, and I mean that From the bottom of my broken heart.
As we have eleven riders in the break of the day, we can have a look at the finale on the local lap as well. Some tight turns in the final km’s, so being at the head of the race soon enough seems to be the message here. The eleven leaders are Gough, Novikov, Andersen, Christapopoulos, Andersen (the other one), Johannessen, Nareklishvili Blouwe, Van Tricht, Johansen and Hecht. Tafjord with three riders, but sprinter team Crabbe as well. Interesting.
We’re halfway the race as the max difference of 3’30” has been brought down to 2’15” by Glanbia, Strava, Volcanica, BWT Hyundai, Aramco, Gjensidige and Eddie Stobart.
50 km to the finish line, the gap now 1’30”! Still some domestiques left in the leading group of course.
The attackers feel the peloton coming closer and start accelerating. 30 km to the finish line as Johannessen has a 15” gap over the ten chasers and an additional 30” over the stretched out peloton.
The Tafjord riders gets caught quickly, and as we enter the penultimate lap with 24 km left it’s Johansen attacking, with Van Tricht behind him! Chaos in the peloton though, with many splits appearing! Keough had to close one of those splits recently, that must have cost him some valuable energy!
What a chaotic race this turned out to be! Van Tricht and Johansen still in the lead with 15 km to go, as Bogdanovics tries to close the gap to them! A first peloton now existing out of 41 riders, with guys like Naesen, Kristoff and Bennett not there!
The two leaders manage to stay ahead of a small peloton, where nobody is cooperating! Final lap, and with 12 km to go their advantage is 20”!
Johansen has to let go of Van Tricht’s wheel, as sprinter Losch uses the Pas Normal rider to join the Crabbe rider at the head of the race! Ovsyannikov on a mission to close the gap, with all sprinters in his wheel already! 7.5 km to go!
Youngster Van Tricht has to let go of Losch’ wheel now, as none of the sprinters wants to be another guy’s lead-out by closing the gap! 4 km left as Eddie Stobart’s Haas now attacks and wants to join the BWT Hyundai leader as soon as possible!
But the Australian seems to be out of energy already! Losch isn’t, and the BWT rider knows this is the moment to go again, with no cooperation at all behind him! 2 km to go and Losch is on his way to victory!
Haas accelerating under the flamme rouge with Sbaragli, Boivin and Ratto behind him, but Losch already at 700 meters of the finish line! Surely this can’t go wrong anymore?!
No! Great tactics by the BWT Hyundai rider in a race that was way harder and more chaotic than expected, as he takes home the victory!
Sbaragli (2nd) and Haas (3rd) also on the podium, ahead of Nelson (4th), Boivin (5th), Selig (6th) and Matthews (7th).
Wippert (8th), Cimolai (9th) and Prasad (10th) complete the top-10, with the other riders in this little group being Vingerling (11th), Ratto (12th), Berger (13th) and Bouhanni (14th).
