Matteo Trentin (UAE Team Emirates) won the Giro del Veneto one-day race from a five-man break, outsprinting Rémy Rochas (Cofidis) after the Frenchman lost ground coming out of the final corner.
Second in the same late-season race last year, Trentin was determined not to let the 159.2 kilometre hilly event pass him by a second time. He took UAE Team Emirates' 49th victory of the 2022 season.
Rochas attacked in the final kilometre, but Trentin jumped on his wheel and took the win by several bike lengths.
Matteo Vercher (TotalEnergies), already part of the early break of the day, rounded out the podium in third.
“Last year it really pissed me off to be second,” Trentin, who lost the previous year in a bigger group sprint to Xandro Meurisse said afterwards.
“This year we came with a really strong team and it really played out perfectly. I had really good legs today and an exceptionally good teammate in Diego Ulissi. And that’s it, I finally won.”
Rochas pointed out that he had tried his best, powering away over the summit of the final climb some ten kilometres from the finish and helping to form the winning break of five. But once he had attacked in the final kilometre and a rider as fast and experienced as Trentin came up to his back wheel, he knew he was racing for second.
How it unfolded
On a warm, clear day in northeast Italy, a three-rider break composed of Ludovic Robeet (Bingoal Pauwels), Vercher (TotalEnergies) and Matteo Zurlo (Zalf-Euromobil-Zior) formed the key break of the race. They moved clear at the front of the 116-strong field as the pack headed into the decisive, much more undulating second half of the 2022 Giro del Veneto route.
The three had formed part of a 15-rider group that got away thanks to a pronounced planned mass acceleration by UAE, as Trentin recounted later, on a section of technical roads some 70 kilometres into the race.
“The idea was to split the group,” Trentin said, “and see who was left up there afterwards.”
Some high-profile names were in the break that Robeet, Vercher and Zurlo left behind. They included Trentin and Ulissi, but also Rochas (Cofidis), Alessandro De Marchi (Israel-Premier Tech), Nicola Conci and Jay Vine (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana Qazaqstan), Alessandro Tonelli (Bardiani-CSF-Faizane), Davide Bais (Eolo-Kometa), Andres Kron (Lotto Soudal), Alexandre Balmer (BikeExchange-Jayco) and Natnael Tesfazion (Drone Hopper-Androni Giocattoli).
Sensing their time ahead was perhaps limited, local rider Zurlo opted to push on from the leading trio on the winding Perarolo climb, while Robeet and Vercher were absorbed by their chasing group. As the race entered the 21 kilometres finishing circuit, based on Vicenza and tackled twice, Zurlo was swept up as well.
Hard work from Alpecin-Deceuninck and UAE Team Emirates, the two teams with more than a lone representative in the 15-rider leading break, allowed the move to maintain a brisk pace and a gap of roughly a minute as the first lap came and went.
That there were no attacks at all suggested the mountain specialists at least would try their luck on the final ascent of the circuit’s one climb, the 3.5-kilometre Arcugano, and so it proved.
Zurlo attempted to get away again and when that proved ineffectual, Lopez delivered a more successful trademark long surge, to which Trentin quickly responded, with Rochas the closest behind.
Over the summit and on the sweeping descent towards the finish town of Vicenza, Vercher and De Marchi also came across, carving a small gap and leaving it as a quintet ahead. The five swept into the long descent into central Vincenza with a 15-second advantage but the speed was so high it was as hard for an attack to go clear as it was for the remainder of the break to regain contact.
Inside the town, Lopez grabbed a tiny advantage on the rising road over a railway bridge, yet Trentin immediately and closed down the attack. De Marchi, reportedly still searching for a team for 2023, then made an equally predictable move with around a kilometre to go. Once again Trentin did not hesitate to jump on his wheel.
Having tried his luck on the Arcugnano, Rochas once again chanced his arm in the winding finale and Trentin knew he had the win in his legs. He stormed across and then past the Frenchman coming out of a final corner to take the victory with comparative ease.
Having finished second in 2021, Trentin said later, there was no way victory was getting away from him this time.
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