Jordi Meeus (Bora-Hansgrohe) shut down the early sprint by Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X Mobility) and won stage 2 of the Tour of Norway in Egersund.
Pavel Bittner (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) finished second, as he also came around Kristoff in the final metres. The Uno-X Mobility rider held on to third from a fast-charging Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), who was fourth.
For Meuss, it was his first victory since winning the final stage of last year’s Tour de France on the Champs Élysées.
“Winning is always nice. It was a pretty hectic finale, not just in the peloton, but also due to strong crosswinds from the right," Meeus said.
"Despite the many position battles, I stayed calm and concentrated. The timing for the sprint was perfect. I’m very happy to celebrate my first victory of the season.”
The GC remained unchanged, with Axel Laurance (Alpecin-Deceuninck) in the lead by 12 seconds over Bart Lemmen (Visma-Lease a Bike) and 13 seconds over Adne Holter (Uno-X Mobility).
The favourites closed down a breakaway of three riders with under 3km to race, two of those riders - Brendan Rhim (Project Echelon Racing) and Johan Ravnøy (Team Coop-Repsol) - having been part of an original lead group from the opening 25km of the 173.1km stage.
Uno-X Mobility pushed the pace at the front of the race heading the one-kilometre kite, Fredrik Dversnes leading out Kristoff, who was looking for his 11th victory at the Tour of Norway. Behind that duo Per Strand Hagenes took up the controls for Visma-Lease a Bike to lead Van Aert toward the front.
But it was Meeus who took his own line up the right side of the straightaway and jumped out of the saddle to accelerate to the front, then seated himself for the celebration at the line a full bike length ahead of the pursuers.
Rhim and Ravnøy had pushed away with Elrik Vang Aas (Norway), the KOM leader, and Matúš Štoček (ATT Investments) across the opening 25km, after the start in Sola at the indoor velodrome. They stayed together until Štoček was the first to drop on the approach to the single categorised climb of the day, category 2 Dalane Energi-Bakken (6.4km at 3.1%), with 60km to go.
In a remarkable attack, Van Aert bridged to the leaders and replaced Štoček with the fight for KOM points, Vang Aas getting the top points to say in the mountain classification lead. Van Aert then dropped back to the peloton.
With 10km to go, the Rhim and Ravnøy duo from the original break were joined by Walter Calzoni (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) at the front. Visma-Lease a Bike and Alpecin-Deceuninck led the chase behind, the trio in sight just 14 seconds ahead with the road flattening out to the finish.
The stage was set for a bunch sprint once the leaders were absorbed back into the peloton with 2.9km remaining.
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