Mitchelton-Scott’s Caleb Ewan scored his first European victory of the new season Sunday at the Clasica de Almeria, out-kicking Danny van Poppel and Timothy Dupont.
After just seven kilometres of racing, seven riders formed the main breakaway of theday and rode out to a maximum advantage of four minutes 30seconds.
Once the breakaway was caught with 35kilometres to go, Mitchelton-SCOTT worked to follow the attacks and keep things together ahead of the sprint. Finally re-united with his lead-out train, Ewan was able to avoid crashes in the final and navigate through the peloton before launching from the wheel of Luka Mezgec to the victory.
“It’s really good to hit the ground running in my first European race and it was good to have the full lead-out squad behind me today. We were all a bit lost after getting caught behind a crash but once we all got back together and started the lead-out, no-one came round us and I am happy I was able to finish it off.
“I haven’t raced with these lead-out guys since the Tour of Britain so that’s a fair chunk of time away. It is good to get the confidence back in working together and that nothing has really changed, that is what we needed going into these next big races.
“I felt pretty tired during the day because we did five hours training yesterday, so I didn’t feel great but in the final when the adrenalin kicks in I felt alright andoverall it was a good day.”
Clasica de Almeria 2018 results:
| 1 | Caleb Ewan (Mitchelton-Scott) | 4:35:28 |
| 2 | Danny van Poppel (LottoNL-Jumbo) | ,, |
| 3 | Timothy Dupont (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) | ,, |
| 4 | Hugo Hofstetter (Cofidis) | ,, |
| 5 | Florian Sénéchal (Quick-Step Floors) | ,, |
| 6 | Marko Kump (CCC Sprandi Polkowice) | ,, |
| 7 | Mads Würtz Schmidt (Katusha-Alpecin) | ,, |
| 8 | Carlos Barbero (Movistar) | ,, |
| 9 | Edward Planckaert (Sport Vlaanderen – Baloise) | ,, |
| 10 | Jon Aberasturi (Euskadi-Murias) | ,, |
