Tobias Lund Andresen powers to first WorldTour podium for Team dsm-firmenich

The penultimate WorldTour race of the season, Team dsm-firmenich showed themselves during the fifth stage of the Gree-Tour of Guangxi with Tobias Lund Andresen finishing off the good teamwork with third place, the Dane’s first WorldTour podium.

Rolling out from Liuzhou, the peloton awaited the longest day of this week in China, taking on 209,6 kilometres towards the finish line in Guilin. An attacking opening, Niklas Märkl managed to jump into one of the breakaways, but were not allowed to go clear by the peloton, unlike the next one. This break of four riders took advantage of a maximum of five minutes, which eventually would go down again after several teams started to chase before the final two climbs of the day. Working together well, Team dsm-firmenich remained a close-knit collective to protect sprint leader Lund Andresen. The break being caught with ten kilometres to go, things started to heat up as the team brought the Dane to the front. Positioning Lund Andresen well near the front of the race, he chose the right wheels to follow, opened his sprint at the right moment and crossed the line in third position, claiming his first-ever WorldTour podium.

Tuesday will mark the final race day of Team dsm-firmenich’s 2023 campaign, as the guys will chase for another top result in the final stage of Gree-Tour of Guangxi.

Directly after the stage, Lund Andresen commented: “Early in today’s stage, there were bonus seconds to gather for the general classification, so the GC teams fought for the seconds and put pressure on the peloton. After the intermediate sprint, a lot of riders were keen on going in the breakaway, so the jumping took a long time. After the break went, it was like the rest of the days, where we went easy for about 100 km, before we approached the climbs. The break had five minutes, so we had to go hard over the climbs and hold the pressure the whole way to the finish. I told the guys I was feeling really good, so we sat at the front and got ready for the sprint. The guys positioned me well towards the front and then I took over for the last 800 metres. Unfortunately, I caught a bit of wind before starting the sprint, but I did the best sprint I could and I’m satisfied with my first WT podium. Tomorrow we’ll do anything to finish off the season in style.”