Kristoff celebrates season’s first

Alexander Kristoff scored his first victory of the 2018 season today in UAE Team Emirates’s colours in the Tour of Oman, the final stage running 135.5km along the Muscat Corniche.

The European champion won this stage already in the last two seasons, 2016 and 2017. Today, he didn’t have any rivals in the group sprint of around 70 riders (photo Bettini) and topped Bryan Coquard (Vital Concept Cycling Club), Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek-Segafredo) and Magnus Cort Nielsen (Astana).
A five-man escape dominated the day. Cavagna survived the longest, leaving 2.5 kilometres left to the finish line. Meanwhile, team UAE Team Emirates optimally prepared its sprint and Kristoff followed. The victory came as a result of experience, a strong winter’s training and early season race days in the Dubai Tour and the preceding five in the Omani Arab state.

“I’m very happy to have won my first victory with UAE Team Emirates,” said Kristoff, who is flying tonight from Oman to the UAE for the Abu Dhabi Tour “I feel so much faith from the team and I’ve always had strong men at my side in these first races of the season.
I enjoy this finish a lot. I won already here in 2016 and 2017, so I knew that today would be an optimum chance to succeed. In the meeting this morning, with the spots directors and team-mates, we were very detailed and studied well every move we’d make in the final. That way, we took on the final kilometres perfectly.
My team-mates worked impressively, I could not ask more of them. And for me, I had great legs, a spark in my legs, which let me take this beautiful sprint.
To win is always great, but to do it with a new team, it’s even better. It’s easy to find success in this team given that everything prepared perfectly.

We’re looking forward to taking this victory back to the UAE and hope to use it a momentum going into the Abu Dhabi Tour. Hopefully it can inspire us to produce more fantastic reults in front of our home fans, who are surely celebrating this first victory also dedicating it to the memory of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nayhan in the 100th year after his birth“.

In the final overall classification, Rui Costa finished 10th at 1-37 minutes behind race winner Alexey Lutsenko (Astana).

Stage 6 results
1 Alexander Kristoff (UAE Team Emirates) 3h11’29”
2 Bryan Coquard (Vital Concept) s.t.
3 Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek-Segafredo) s.t.

Final general classification
1 Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) 22h49’50”
2 Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) 11″
3 Gorka Izagirre (Bahrain Merida) 28″
10 Rui Costa (UAE Team Emirates) 1’37”