Bettiol attacks and races solo for 30 kilometers to take the win.
Alberto Bettiol, Giro d’Italia stage winner and the Tour of Flanders champion, adds a win at Milano-Torino to his palmarès today.
As the race approached Prascorsano, Alberto attacked the peloton. He didn’t wait to see if anyone would join him. The Tuscan rider put his head down and began a 30 kilometer time trial effort.
He quickly opened a gap on the peloton that maxed out around 40 seconds. As the kilometers ticked by and the terrain rolled up and down, Alberto’s advantage yo-yoed, dropping at times to just seven and eight seconds.
With two kilometers to go, the peloton could see Alberto ahead. He kept his focus on driving himself forward to take the win.
“I didn’t expect to go so fast for so long,” Alberto said. “I expected a bunch of riders behind [to follow my attack] but in the end it was really tough. I didn’t plan to suffer so much in Milano-Torino but I’m really proud to win today. For the team it’s important because it sends to my teammates and to the staff an extra motivation for the upcoming races.”
Head sport director Charly Wegelius said that the team had prepared for a few different race scenarios, including Alberto’s aggressive attack.
“That was one of the plans, for Alberto to go solo,” Charly said. “We wanted a hard, hard race to get rid of the real pure sprinters. One option was to ride tempo but the peloton did that for us and the other option, we were either going to have Marijn wait for the sprint if it was a bigger group or have Alberto try early. I wasn’t actually expecting him to go quite so early but he did a great ride. He got a good gap quite quickly, obviously because he was riding so fast. With five Bora riders there, we knew it was going to be tight, especially with the headwind until four kilometers to go. But we also knew that coming into the final, there’d be a certain amount of hesitation when the others didn’t want to commit for each other behind, so we just wanted to get him as close as we could to the line that they would lose their organization and that’s luckily what happened.”
The squad will celebrate tonight with some well-earned prosecco before looking ahead to Milano-Sanremo this weekend.
1.Alberto Bettiol (EF Education Easypost) 3:54:13
2.Jan Christen (UAE Team Emirates) +7”
3.Marc Hirschi (UAE Team Emirates) +9”
4.Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates) s.t
