"Nobody bet on the attackers today" - Benjamin Thomas can't believe what he and his breakaway companions achieved

A nice day out on the beatiful Ligurian coast, light northern breeze and a bunch finish on the menu. What could go wrong? Well, the sprinter teams learned the hard way today in a class taught by professors Benjamin Thomas, Michael Valgren and co. The breakaway of four never created a remarkable gap to the peloton, however it didn't require much to upset all the favourites either.

"It was like a long, long, long team pursuit," Thomas said in an interview afterwards. "We did an amazing break. I don’t believe it. It was a really hard final and every pull was full gas. It’s unbelievable. I think 10 kilometres to go we started to believe because it was still 40 seconds and we had a tailwind."

"Nobody bet on the attackers today and the final was really critical because of the attack with one kilometre to go from the Italian rider. I risked losing by not closing the gap. Everything is perfect today – I don’t know what to say."

"Chapeau to the guys for working well together – we didn’t start playing games, which was nice. The Polti guy was taking short turns and was not super strong – and then came with a late attack which messed up the cooperation obviously. I had to go for a really long sprint. But we worked well together and we knew it would be hard and we made it," Valgren added.