Mitchelton-Scott win Hammer Hong Kong

Image 1 of 4

Mitchelton-Scott held on in the Hammer Chase race at Hammer Hong Kong to take overall victory and so secure victory in the three-race 2018 Hammer Series.

Quick Step Floors were unable to catch Mitchelton-Scott in the final team time trial chase, finishing 18 seconds behind their time of 27:18. Team Sunweb, with help from Tom Dumoulin, set the fastest time of 27:07. 

The Australian team dominated the Hammer Chase at every Hammer Series race this year en route to their overall win. Back in Stavanger they beat BMC Racing by 59 seconds, while in Limburg they beat the same team by 19 seconds.

"It was really hard," said Matteo Trentin after the finish. "Especially because we had the 40km point race and straight away the time trial. You didn't have time to recover. I liked it actually."

"It's a really good way to round out the season," added Cameron Meyer. "It's an important event to us - it's new in the world of cycling and for us to win the series is really good so to finish it off in a city like Hong Kong is really good."

The overall 2018 Hammer Series standings saw Mitchelton-Scott top the leader board with 281 points (from a possible 300) while Quick Step Floors finished second on 234.1 points. Team Sunweb finished third on 152.7 points.

How it happened

The Chase was held on the same 4.3km circuit as the Hammer Sprint, covering five laps, with the main obstacle being the hairpin turns and a short sprint up the 6% gradient bridge. The 21.5km 'team time trial' Chase saw teams set off at 20-second intervals, with Mitchelton-Scott leading the chase while Quick Step Floors and the rest would be chasing them for victory.

Quick Step Floors had initially been thought to have won the Hammer Sprint, but it was found that Dries Devenyns and Fabio Jakobsen suffered punctures and took a lap out, before returning back into the wrong group. The pair then went on to 'score' points despite being a lap down. The finding saw Mitchelton-Scott elevated to first, hence their leading off in the Hammer Chase.

UAE Team Emirates dominated the 'consolation' group with a time of 28:13. Starting off leading the second group in ninth place, UAE Team Emirates held on to beat BMC Racing by 21 seconds. EF Education First-Drapac had been the second team on the road for much of the race, having overtaken Nippo-Vini Fantini, but were chased down by BMC Racing in the closing stages, just being edged out on the line.

Mitchelton-Scott were first off in the 'finalist' group. They started out with a 20-second advantage over Quick Step Floors, and only had to finish ahead of them in order to seal overall victory. It was Sam Bewley, Lucas Hamilton, Roger Kluge, Cameron Meyer and Matteo Trentin vs the Quick Step Floors line-up of Rémi Cavagna, Dries Devenyns, Philippe Gilbert, Davide Martinelli and Maximilian Schachmann.

In the end, despite the best efforts of the latter group, it was a clear win for the Australian squad. The 'wolf pack' managed to close in on the Hammer Sprint winners by just two seconds over the five laps of the course, a good effort but just not enough to overhaul Mitchelton-Scott, who have been almost impervious at every Hammer race this year.

Further back, the starting order was Bora-Hansgrohe, Lotto-Soudal, Team Sunweb, Team Sky and LottoNL-Jumbo and Trek-Segafredo. Team Sunweb were able to make a difference on the short TTT course, overhauling Lotto-Soudal before the midway point. They came close to chasing down Bora-Hansgrohe too, but fell nine seconds short at the line. LottoNL-Jumbo pipped Team Sky to sixth place by a single second.

Results