It wasn’t a bunch sprint after all for the final stage in the 5th Tour of Norway, but Alexander Kristoff still positioned himself to take third place behind solo winner Andreas Vangstad of Team Sparebanken Sør. It was the first pro victory for the 24-year old, as he headed up an all-Norwegian stage 5 podium with Frederik Galta coming in second at 11-seconds.

Kristoff was another 3-seconds behind, leading home a 16-man chase group and keeping the green points jersey for the overall classification.

"We were hoping for a bunch sprint. I won here last year, but the time to the finish was a little bit shorter distance from the climb than it was last year. I’m pretty happy I got third place because at the top of the climb I was nowhere near the front of this group of 15-20 riders. With 1 km to go I was at the back and had to come all the way through. The team worked very well today. It’s just a pity these young Norwegian guys were so strong,” Alexander Kristoff said  with a laugh, referring to stage winner Vangstad and Frederik Galta.

“I’m really happy with the way the team worked this week. They did fantastic work for our leader, especially when Alex wore the leader’s jersey and we had to take responsibility for the race. Alex won two stages, then third place today in very nasty weather, plus he earned the green points jersey, which was his goal. The teams were only six riders here, so it’s not easy to control a race. You have to work well as a unit and the guys showed that they are a real team. It’s very different from racing with 8 riders. Egor Silin and Dmitriy Kozonchuk did a fantastic job up front. I’m very pleased to see them take this role during the week. Now we move on to the Tour des Fjords and it’s more or less like this race with more cold weather. We will also bring Simon Špilak to that race and he’s good in these conditions, plus of course Alex is still in his home country with high goals, so we will try for more victories,” said team director Torsten Schmidt.

Andreas Vangstad attacked from the main field with 13 km to go and rode across to the remains of the day’s break. He didn’t stop there, however, and continued to ride solo to the finish line with a winning time of 4:10.28 for stage 5.

At 175 km from Flå to Hønefoss (Eggemoen), the course included four times through the finish line and a challenging climb on every circuit with rain falling for much of the day. Jesper Hansen (Tinkoff-Saxo) held tight to the general classification, earning the win by 47 seconds to Edvald Boasson Hagen (MTN-Qhuebeka) and 1.05 to Sky’s David Lopez Garcia. Alexander Kristoff finished 8th in the GC.