Lillehammer, 24th of May – 2014
The 4th and penultimate stage of Tour of Norway from Brumunddal to the winter Olympic town of Lillehammer was the queen stage and a mountainous circuit concluded the day and the GC was expected to change.
Tinkoff-Saxo’s Edward Beltran had a few good punches from the peloton that kept getting smaller throughout the entire stage. With 25 kilometers to go, Ruben Fernandez (Caja Rural) had a small gap to the group of favorites chasing him. Soon, Tinkoff-Saxo’s Jesper Hansen launched a fierce attack, was joined by Bauke Mollema (Belkin) and Norwegian wonder-kid, Christian Elking and they completely shattered the group.
The gap to Fernandez was bridged going down the descent and the four riders were being chased down by the IAM and CCC Polsat teams but they worked beautifully together. Even though the chasers came very close, Mollema and Tinkoff-Saxo’s Hansen entered the finish line side by side but the Belkin rider was the strongest rider today and took the win.
Jesper
DS, Tristan Hoffman was happy with his young riders’ performance:
“Both Edward and Jesper did a super stage. Obviously, Beltran didn’t had it in him to make the difference today but Jesper surely demonstrated world-class by launching away with a guy like Mollema and stayed with him. Jesper went first through one of the final sharp corners and while Elking and Fernandez crashed behind him, Mollema stayed on his wheel but passed him on the final hundred meters to take the stage but I’m very happy about this result. I think it’s going to be difficult to change the GC now but if we see an opportunity to do so, we’ll grab it,” said Hoffman.
