Tobias Lund Andresen 2nd overall at CRO Race after nail-biting final stage

Going into the final stage only 14 seconds down on GC leader McNulty, Team dsm-firmenich PostNL, and Tobias Lund Andresen still had much to fight for on the final flat stage of this year’s CRO race. With the first intermediate sprint point just after the start, the pace was high straightaway, but Tobias was able to claim the first three bonus seconds of the day. After the sprint, a group of five broke away, but Team dsm-firmenich PostNL took charge again in the peloton and kept them close. After some great work by the team, Tobias also won the final bonus sprint, and all eyes were on the final bunch sprint. Unfortunately, Tobias got boxed in a bit, finishing outside the top 10. Despite this, after strong racing by the whole group, he was still able to finish second in the GC and won the points and young riders classification. His teammate Warren Barguil finished eighth in the GC, after a great week for the team, animating the race day by day and securing some good results.
After the race, Lund Andresen said: “We went all in today, trying to go for the stage and the GC. We managed to get the seconds underway but ended up short-handed in the final. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in position to sprint for the win and finish it off. I think everyone who watched the race can’t doubt how hard we worked. Everyone was committed from the first stage, and I’m proud of how they helped me throughout the race, as well as the support I received from my teammates. It’s a bittersweet feeling not to win the overall GC, but we can be happy with a second place and two jerseys after all our efforts.”
Team dsm-firmenich PostNL coach Luke Roberts continued: “We had Tobias at 14 seconds on the GC going into today’s stage, and we decided we just had to go for the overall win. We made the plan to attack the bonus seconds to bring us into a position where the stage win could also bring us the overall victory. It was a monumental task for the guys, as the whole peloton knew what we had to do, sat back, and let us do it. The boys had to ride at the front all day. The first sprint went well, but the second one went to the break, which held out against us. Tobias was able to win the third one again. Unfortunately, the finish didn’t go as well as we hoped, and we got caught out of position. But that was the risk we wanted to take to go all in for the overall win. I’m really happy with how the guys rode as a team all week. We lost Pavel as our original GC finisher due to a crash, but then we switched to Tobias, who nearly finished the job. To come away with a stage win, second in the GC, and winning the young riders’, points, and teams classifications, we’re really happy with how the week went!”