UAE Team Emirates' Alexander Kristoff won the opening stage of the Abu Dhabi Tour, out-sprinting Andrea Guardini and Caleb Ewan on a flat first day.
Alexander Kristoff
Nationality: Norwegian
Date of birth: July 5, 1987
Height: 181cm
Weight: 78kg
Team: UAE Team Emirates
With the pure sprinter starting to become a rare breed, Alexander Kristoff is a fast man with more to his repertoire than just a ferocious sprint.
Like John Degenkolb (Trek-Segafredo) and Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe), the Norwegian is as comfortable in the Classics as he is sprinting it out on the flat terrain in stage races.
While he took an impressive bronze medal at the Olympic Games road race in 2012, Kristoff’s real launch to prominence came in 2014, when he scored a first Monument win at the Milan-San Remo along with two stages at the Tour de France.
In the following years, things only seemed to be on the up. Second in San Remo in 2015 behind Degenkolb was swiftly followed with a second career Monument win at the Tour of Flanders in a season which saw him consistently podium in many of the races he entered.
The 2016 and 2017 seasons saw Kristoff consistently score stage wins in smaller stage races, and place in the top 10 of the Classics, although there would be no repeat of a Flanders or Milan-San Remo victory.
Kristoff moved to UAE Team Emirates from Katusha-Alpecin for the 2018 season, taking early stage victories in the Abu Dhabi Tour and Tour of Oman, but with the only highlights of the Classics season being fourth in Milan-San Remo.
Major results: Milan-San Remo 2014 | 2x stages Tour de France 2014 | Tour of Flanders 2015
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Norwegian Alexander Kristoff pays back his Katusha-Alpecin team's hard work with victory in London
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