Sam Bennett wins men's Race Torquay

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Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep) won the men's Race Torquay evening race in Victoria, Australia, on Thursday, as riders warmed up for the weekend's Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.

The Irishman got an excellent lead out from teammate Michael Mørkøv to beat Giacomo Nizzolo (NTT Pro Cycling) and Alberto Dainese (Team Sunweb). 

A strong attack by Daryl Impey (Mitchelton-Scott)  and Dries Devenyns (Deceuninck-QuickStep) was caught with a lap to go and the sprinters' team chased down a solo attack by Pavel Sivakov (Team Ineos) to ensure a high-speed bunch sprint.

"It was a hard race, but at one point I asked the guys to make it a bit harder for everyone else, and they did exactly that, and did the perfect job," Bennett said after taking the win.

"It was tough, being the first effort after the Tour Down Under, and it was a very hard course," he continued. "But it was a really good distance, as being only 130km made it aggressive."

How it unfolded

The earlier women's Race Torquay – won by FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope's Brodie Chapman – had raced in temperatures in the high 30 degrees Centigrade, but things had cooled a little, to the low-to-mid 30s, by the time of the men's race in the late afternoon.

The race's early five-man breakaway – made up of Nick Schultz (Mitchelton-Scott), Neilson Powless (EF Pro Cycling), Sunweb's Rob Power, Hermann Pernsteiner (Bahrain McLaren) and Clément Chevrier (AG2R La Mondiale) – might have been expected to stay away for longer than it did, but it was clear that the sprinters' teams weren't willing to take any risks, with the quintet being reeled just before the end of lap six of the 10-lap race.

On the tougher, more undulating first third of the 13.3km circuit on lap seven, Lotto Soudal's Caleb Ewan dropped off the back as a result of the ever-quickening pace, perhaps preferring to keep his powder dry for Sunday's race.

It was the cue for Deceuninck-QuickStep's Dries Devenyns and Mitchelton-Scott's Daryl Impey to try their luck, and the duo built up a small lead over the chasing pack over the next three laps.

The bunch, led by Israel Start-Up Nation for their sprinter André Greipel, had brought the gap down to around 20 seconds with two laps to go, but seemed to realise that they'd been a little too hasty, and would have two laps to try to control things, and so left the pair hanging a little longer.

Heading into the last lap, NTT – for Nizzolo – and Cofidis, riding for European road race champion Elia Viviani, helped Israel Start-Up Nation bring it all back together, and NTT's Dylan Sutherland led the bunch across the line for the penultimate time.

Various riders attempted to escape on the last lap – including Lotto's Adam Hansen – but were never given much rope. Pavel Sivakov (Team Ineos) was the next to attack, with around five kilometres left to race, and got a good gap, attempting to time-trial towards the finish.

It was all together again going into the final kilometre, however, with the sprinters' teams winding up the speed to ensure that no more attacks could go clear, and a crash that brought down Team BridgeLane's Jensen Plowright with 150 metres to go couldn't affect the frontrunners.

Bennett took the victory from Nizzolo and Dainese with relative ease after a lead-out from Danish road race champion Mørkøv, which surely now elevates the Irish road race champion into the category of favourite for Sunday's race.

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