Axel Laurance takes stage 2 at 2024 Tour of Norway and moves into overall race lead

Alpecin-Deceuninck's Axel Laurance has fired to the stage win of stage 2 of the 2024 Tour of Norway, moving into the overall race lead in the process.

With stage 2 of the 2024 Tour of Norway all about the final climb, many riders were saving their legs for the end of the day. Four riders however, bravely attacked early to form the day's breakaway, most notable of that quartet being Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL's Sean Flynn.

Heading into the final 30km, the breakaway, now down to just three riders was still a relatively large one at 2:43 over the peloton and by the time the riders reached 10km to go, the gap hadn't dropped too much, still at around 1:20. With 5.4km to go, all attackers were caught by the peloton.

As the attacks began on the final climb, most notably from Tudor Pro Cycling Team's Marco Brenner, Thibau Nys was notably put into difficulty although it possibly could have been bike-related. In the sprint for the line, Axel Laurance opened things and despite a late fightback from Ethan Hayter and Bart Lemmen, no one could catch the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider.