European RR Champs (Men)

Italian Matteo Trentin sprinted to victory from a small group at the European championships in Glasgow, bringing the special championship jersey to Mitchelton-SCOTT for the first time in the team’s seven year existence.

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European RR Champs (Men)

Italian Matteo Trentin sprinted to victory from a small group at the European championships in Glasgow today, bringing the special championship jersey to Mitchelton-SCOTT for the first time in the team’s seven year existence. It was an incredible performance by the 29-year-old, who bounced back from a spinal fracture which he sustained earlier in the year during Paris-Roubaix, to return to top form and sprint to the championship victory for Italy.

With one compatriot, David Cimolai, working with him in the breakaway, Trentin claimed the victory ahead of cyclo-cross stars Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) and Wout van Aert (Blegium).

The winning move

The 235-kilometre one-day race took place on a circuit around Glasgow city centre and with heavy rain from almost start to finish, it was a challenging five hours 50 minutes in the saddle, which saw numerous riders quit. The first breakaway of the day was formed by Krists Neilands (LAT), Robert-Jon McCarthy (IRL), Josef Cerny (CZE), Roland Thalmann (SUI), Polychronis Tzortzakis (GRE) and Matthias Krizek (AUT).

After the catch was made with 100km to go and new breakaway of 10riders established with just 60km remaining and included two Mitchelton-SCOTT riders, Swiss Michael Albasini and Trentin.
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The 10 rider group opened up over a two minute advantage and looked ready to battle it out for the medals but with nine kilometres to go a crash on a wet corner saw Albasini go down. The crash split the front group which left just five riders in contention including Trentin and his Italian teammate Cimolai. The pair worked to stay in a good position coming into the final sprint as Trentin powered from the wheels, down the final straight and to the championship victory.

The much eluded European jersey will now be worn within Mitchelton-SCOTT for the the next 12 months.

Matteo Trentin – 2018 European Champion – “It’s incredible, really incredible to have won after everything I’ve been through recently, I want to thank everyone who was there for me. This is a great day! We wanted to be always in the front because we didn’t want to take any risks. The race was made even harder by the weather, but we managed to deal with it the best we could.”

“There was a moment of worry a few kilometres from the end when there was a crash within the leading group, but fortunately it didn’t affect me, and I turned around and saw that Davide Cimolai (Groupama-FDJ/Italy) also managed to stay upright. That proved also to be fortuitous, because before that crash, we had decided that we were going to attack and afterwards we had to evaluate how to act and on reflection the crash probably did us a little favour.

“Then in the sprint, I asked Cimolai to lead me out and he did. He did a spectacular job, as did all the Italian team.”

Result:
1 Matteo Trentin Italy
2 Mathieu van der Poel Netherlands
3 Wout van Aert Belgium
4 Jesús Herrada Spain
5 Davide Cimolai Italy
6 Xandro Meurisse Belgium
7 Michael Albasini Switzerland
8 Pierre-LucPerichon France
9 Nico Denz Germany
10 Maurits Lammertink Netherlands
11 Alexander Kristoff Norway

15 Luke Rowe Great Britain
20 Elia Viviani Italy
25 Greg Van Avermaet Belgium
30 Scott Thwaites Great Britain

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