Tour of Norway: Thibau Nys climbs to stage 1 victory at Voss Resort

Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) followed up his overall victory in the Tour de Hongrie with another win on the opening stage of the Tour of Norway.

The Belgian played off a surge from teammate Mathias Vacek to go clear of the peloton with 700 metres to go and powered to the stage win and first race leader's jersey on the uphill finish.

Adne Holter (Uno-X) and Axel Laurance (Alpecin-Deceuninck) finished second and third on the stage, four seconds behind.

Nys heads into the second stage with eight seconds on Holter and 10 on Laurance but isn't expecting to hold his lead when the race heads to Gullingen with a much larger climb to the finish.

"I'm so happy with a win today," Nys said. "Tomorrow will be a really hard finish. Maybe a bit too hard for me. But on the other hand, I also didn't expect to win in Hungary on the long climb. So we will just go for it tomorrow. I don't expect to be there to win the stage and try to win a GC but I just go all in and we'll see where we end. Everything's possible."

Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), racing for the first time since his devastating crash at the Dwars door Vlaanderen, was dropped on the final climb.

"It went quite well today. It was a controlled match. So that was welcome for me," Van Aert told Het Laatste Nieuws.

"The final was quite hectic. I don't think we were really right together, but I wanted to at least get them into that last steep mile and a half. But at two kilometers I rode into the rider in front of me and then I lost some momentum. 

"From the start of the final climb I was certainly against the limit in the race. I felt good in my lungs but it had been a long time since I had to go so deep. I have not had any problems with my injuries while riding, fortunately.

Van Aert and the rest of the peloton will face an even tougher summit finish in Gullingen on Friday, topping out on a climb of almost 6km at 8.7%. 

"I hope I will get better in the coming days," Van Aert said. "I had no problems on the bike. I hope I can recover well. Tomorrow it will be even more difficult with a real uphill finish."

How it unfolded

The 142-kilometre stage started in Voss and included two different circuits with a finish above the starting town at the hilltop Voss Resort.

The fight to get into the breakaway took longer than normal, and it wasn't until after 20 kilometres of attacks that seven riders were able to open up a gap.

Timo Roosen (DSM-Firmenich-PostNL), Lennert Teugels (Bingoal WB), Abram Stockman (TDT Unibet), Filip Reha (ATT Investments), Sam Boardman (Project Echelon), Halvor Utengen Sandstad (Team Coop-Repsol), and Eirik Vang Aas (Norway) made the move looking to take the first mountains classification jersey with points available on two climbs, the category 1 climb 80 kilometres into the stage and a category 2 with 43km to go.

Roosen, however, lost contact on the approach to the first KOM, went back to the peloton, got dropped from it, and then abandoned the race while Vang Aas sprinted to the top to take the points.

Lidl-Trek kept the breakaway's gap below two minutes and, when they hit the second climb their lead was 1:25 with Boardman and Stockman struggling to hold the wheels. Vang Aas sprinted his way into the mountains jersey atop the second climb, and the leaders' gap stretched to 1:41 after the top.

However, that advantage plummeted as the peloton surged toward the final climb, with Tudor, Lidl-Trek and Visma-Lease a Bike lining out the bunch in pursuit.

With 19km to go, it appeared as if the breakaway would be caught but the peloton eased, letting the six riders stretch their advantage to 25 seconds with 10 km to go.

It was not meant to be for the escapees, however, and they were brought back with 3.8km to go as Uno-X ramped up the pace.

Inside the final kilometre, Mathias Vacek led out Lidl-Trek teammate Thibau Nys and opened up a sizeable gap on the steepest stretch of the climb to the Voss Resort.

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