Tom Pidcock misses out on GC win at 2025 Arctic Race of Norway as Corbin Strong defends yellow & Fredrik Dversnes takes stage win

Israel - Premier Tech's Corbin Strong has taken the overall win at the 2025 Arctic Race of Norway, holding off the charge of Tom Pidcock on a final stage won by Uno-X Mobility's Fredrik Dversnes.

Eight riders got themselves into the early break on an up and down circuit to conclude the 2025 edition of one of cycling's most beautiful races. Among the attackers were notable names such as Davide Ballerini (XDS Astana Team), Adne Holter (Uno-X Mobility), Bjorn Koerdt (Team Picnic PostNL), Matteo Vercher (TotalEnergies) and Asbjørn Hellemose (Team Jayco AlUla). With both Koerdt and Vercher sitting just over a minute down in the GC however, the peloton weren't allowing much leeway.

With 50km to go, and three laps left of the circuit, the leading eight still had 55 seconds on the peloton, but the racing was starting to ignite behind and with around 47km remaining, Eddie Dunbar took a flyer from the peloton, with the Irishman quickly joined by Andreas Leknessund. All this attacking decimated the time gap to the break, and with 43km to go, Dunbar and Leknessund made contact. With both of the counter-attackers having a teammate in the break, Israel - Premier Tech were starting to get concerned behind. The reaction was strong though, and just inside 40km to go, the move was successfully nullified.

There were then key bonus seconds at the intermediate sprint with just over 30km to go, bringing out race leader Corbin Strong and Tom Pidcock. Koerdt took the maximum 3 seconds, with Pidcock taking 2 ahead of Strong's 1, cutting the deficit in the GC to 5 seconds.

The next move to get clear separation at the front then came from Stefano Oldani and Hugo de la Calle, with the pair 15-20 seconds clear heading into the final lap at 16km to go. Once they were caught, Pidcock's teammate Marcel Camprubi took flight. But with 7.5km to go, the Spaniard was swallowed, without Pidcock having made any attempt to follow. As the kilometres continued to tick down towards the final kick to the finish line, time was running out for Pidcock if he wanted to get that key 5 second separation from Strong.

On that final climb, it was an absolute free for all, but as Uno-X Mobility's Fredrik Dversnes took the stage win ahead of Strong, the New Zealander's 2nd place result was enough to secure the overall GC win ahead of Pidcock.