Greipel wins bunch sprint in Hamburg

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Andre Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) claimed the win in the bunch sprint at the Vattenfall Cyclassics in Hamburg. Second place went to Alexander Kristoff (Katusha), who went in the lead too early and ended up setting up his German rival perfectly. Giacomo Nizzolo of Trek was third.

Greipel surprisingly had never won the Vattenfall Cyclassics before in his career, but this time a perfect storm of a late crash taking out Mark Cavendish (Etixx-Quickstep) and Kristoff hitting out prematurely helped the German finally win in Hamburg.

"That was super work from the team, although after crashes in the finale we only had four guys," Greipel said. "I have often hoped to win here. Today it finally worked out."

The race got off to an unusual start in the harbour city of Kiel, with the peloton taking off from a ferry on to the mainland. Shortly after the start, a four-man group got away. Jan Barta (Bora-Argon 18), Matteo Bono (Lampre-Merida), Alex Dowsett (Movistar) and Martin Mortensen (Cult Energy) pulled away and built up a gap of up to five minutes.

MTN-Qhubeka led the chase much of the day, before Lotto-Soudal and Katusha, with their top sprint candidates, moved in. With 60 km to go, Bono and Mortensen were alone in the lead with a gap of less than a minute.

The gap continued to fall and with 43 km to go, the gap was about 30 seconds, and the leading duo had been joined by Philippe Gilbert (BMC), Manuele Boaro (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Matthias Brändle (IAM). However, by the 20 km marker, it had all come back together, with a peloton of about 75 riders.

Linus Gerdemann (Cult Energy) was one of the first to attack, and he and Julien Alaphilippe put in a strong effort, but were never far away from the field. They were swallowed up with 10 km to go.

A crash with less than 3 km to go took down Mark Cavendish (Etixx-QuickStep) and Giant-Alpecin’s Marcel Kittel had been dropped on the third climb of the day, so two top favourites were eliminated.

As could be expected, it came down to defending champion Kristoff and Greipel. The Norwegian opened the sprint, but unfortunately for him, Greipel was directly on his wheel. The German powered past Kristoff and easily cruised in to take his first Vattenfall win.

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