Alexander Kristoff

Alexander Kristoff

Kristoff at the 2015 Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne
Personal information
Full name	Alexander Kristoff
Born	(1987-07-05) 5 July 1987 Oslo, Norway
Height	1.81 m (5 ft 11 in)
Weight	78 kg (172 lb)
Team information
Current team	Team Katusha
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Rider type	Sprinter/Classics specialist
Professional team(s)
2006	Glud & Marstrand–Horsens
2007–2009	Maxbo–Bianchi
2010–2011	BMC Racing Team
2012–	Team Katusha
Major wins
Grand Tours Tour de France 2 individual stages (2014) Stage races Tour des Fjords (2014) Three Days of De Panne (2015) One-day Races and Classics National Road Race Championship (2007, 2011) Milan–San Remo (2014) Tour of Flanders (2015) Vattenfall Cyclassics (2014) GP Ouest-France (2015) Eschborn-Frankfurt City Loop (2014) Scheldeprijs (2015) Grand Prix of Aargau Canton (2015)
Medal record Competitor for  Norway Road bicycle racing Olympic Games 2012 London Road race
Infobox last updated on 30 August 2015

Alexander Kristoff (born 5 July 1987) is a Norwegian professional road bicycle racer with the UCI ProTeam Team Katusha.^[1] He won the Norwegian National Road Race Championship in 2007 and 2011.^[2] His biggest victories were the 2014 Milan–San Remo and the 2015 Tour of Flanders among many other successes.

Career

Kristoff at the Tour des Fjords in 2014

Early career

At six, he moved from Oslo to Stavanger. His stepfather got him interested in cycling rather than football. He started riding for Stavanger SK. At 16 he won the Norwegian youth championship, and finished fourth in the Youth Olympics.^[3] He turned professional in 2006 for Glud & Marstrand Horsens. In 2007, he became Norwegian road champion at 19, beating Thor Hushovd in a sprint of four riders.^[4]

Katusha (2012-)

He won a bronze medal in the road race at the 2012 London Olympic Games.^[5]

In 2014 Kristoff won the Milan–San Remo beating Fabian Cancellara in the sprint. Later the same year Kristoff conceded two stage wins in the Tour the France making him runner up behind Peter Sagan in the Green Jersey Competition. Later this season Kristoff took another victory when he claimed the first place in the Vattenfall Cyclassics such as the Eschborn-Frankfurt City Loop in May. In total Kristoff took 14 victories in the 2014 season ranking him eight on the UCI World Tour.

Kristoff on the podium at his very successful 2015 Three Days of De Panne, where he won the general classification, 3 stages and the points classification

In 2015, Kristoff had a very good start to his campaign by getting three stage victories on the Tour of Qatar, grabbing the sprints jersey in the process. He celebrated another stage victory soon afterward at the Tour of Oman. On March 1, he was outsprinted by Mark Cavendish and grabbed the second position of Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne.^[6] He earned another sprint victory at Paris–Nice, while he was preparing himself for Milan–San Remo. He was looking for a repeat victory at that race, but John Degenkolb had the better of him in the sprint finish and he settled for a still prestigious second position.^[7] Still in the month of March, he went on to finish just shy of the podium in E3 Harelbeke, taking a fourth placing.^[8] He then participated to Three Days of De Panne, where he was part of a six-man breakaway on the first stage and won the sprint of the small group, while being lead-out by his teammate Sven Erik Bystrom.^[9] He reapeated the next day, this time using a bunch sprint to propel himself to victory.^[10] Kristoff also won stage 3a, a bunch sprint where he very slightly edged Andre Greipel by 3/10,000th of a second. With the bonus seconds awarded to him, he won the general classification too after finishing third of stage 3b, a short individual time trial.^[11] In April, Kristoff won the cobbled monument Tour of Flanders, the main goal of his spring season. With some 30 kilometers remaining Niki Terpstra attacked and only Kristoff went with him. The duo got a lead of 30 seconds with the remains of the lead group unable to catch them. Kristoff beat Terpstra in the two-man sprint, to take his biggest win so far.^[12] Three days later Kristoff won the sprinters semi-classic Scheldeprijs,^[13] becoming the first ever to win the Three Days of De Panne, Tour of Flanders and Scheldeprijs in the same season. Kristoff came in tenth at Paris–Roubaix, then took a break from racing.

He came back at the Tour of Norway, where he finished eighth overall while taking two stage successes.^[14] Shortly after, he participated to the Tour des Fjords where he dominated the sprints again by amassing three stage victories, the points classification jersey and a ninth overall position.^[15] He also won the seventh stage of the Tour de Suisse by a whisker over Peter Sagan. Sagan got out of Kristoff's slipstream to try to out-sprint him in the final meters, but to no avail.^[16]

In 2016, he started his season with a hat-trick of stage wins at the flat Tour of Qatar, reaping second position in the overall classification to Mark Cavendish.^[17]

Palmarès

Monuments results timeline

DNF = Did not finish
— = Did not compete

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alexander Kristoff.

• Alexander Kristoff profile at ProCyclingStats
• Alexander Kristoff profile at Cycling Archives