Double top ten on stage sees Kevin Vermaerke 3rd on GC and best young rider with Matt Dinham 6th overall

Fighting to the very end in Nordkapp, Matt Dinham and Kevin Vermaerke took fifth and ninth on the stage respectively; seeing Team dsm-firmenich leave the Arctic Race of Norway with third and sixth on GC, alongside winning the best young rider’s jersey.

From the flag drop on Sunday afternoon in Kvalsund the action was hot with an early intermediate sprint ensuring that no breakaway would form before that, with a GC fight expected for those precious bonus seconds. The team worked really well as a unit and could set up Vermaerke who would take two vital bonus seconds. A dangerous move forged on past the intermediate sprint but that was brought back before a counter attack with Jonas Iversby Hvideberg gained a gap. The 15 riders worked well together and increased their lead to almost three minutes before it was slowly closed down as the kilometres ticked by.

Heading into the hilly final, Romain Combaud and Alberto Dainese did some good positioning work to bring Dinham and Vermaerke towards the front as the gradients began to bite. With the breakaway disintegrating all but one rider was caught inside ten kilometres to go, and Vermaerke and Dinham rotated either following or making the attacks. Yet, into a strong headwind it was tough to break the elastic and like in previous stages the day would be settled in a leg sapping uphill sprint. Dinham and Vermaerke both gave their all with the former taking fifth place and the latter ninth in Nordkapp. It sees the duo take their best ever GC results as professional riders, and rounds off a successful week of racing for the team with Dainese’s stage win on the opening day too.

Vermaerke expressed: “With the headwind sprint we could come with momentum and try and pick our way through the traffic. Unfortunately, we were a bit too far back to go for a top result but Matt was fifth on the stage. With the bonus seconds we got earlier in the stage I could move up to third on GC and win the best young rider’s jersey. I think with Alberto’s stage win and the podium on GC, it was a successful week for us and we’ll take that confidence with us into the next races.” 

Team dsm-firmenich coach Luke Roberts added: “We knew with the headwind in the final today there was a chance it would be a bigger group coming into the finish and it would be harder to make the difference on the hills. We still wanted to try and attack the podium with Kevin in fourth and Matt in sixth, so we tried for the early bonus seconds. Alberto set up Kevin for it and he took two seconds which saw him jump onto the provisional podium at that point. We then looked for the break with Jonas and Romain in case that it could go all the way to the finish. In the end we had Jonas in the break after a long fight but some teams kept it close and fought hard to bring it back. It then inevitably came to that reduced group uphill sprint finish. Kevin got a little boxed in on the run towards the line but Matt ended up finishing it off in a good sprint for fifth. Kevin secured third on the GC and the white jersey, and along with the stage win for Alberto capped off a pretty good week here in Norway for us.”