Two riders in the top 11 positions and two protagonists in two interesting attacks: Lampre-Merida missed a top result in the Vattenfall Cyclassics but the team of sports director Simone Pedrazzini did everything in order to try to achieve a big goal.

The first Lampre ride to attack was Matteo Bono who has specialized in breakaways in the most important races (like  in the past two editions of Milano-Sanremo and in the 2014 Liege-Bastogne-Liege). He escaped from the bunch after 15 km in the race with other 3 riders (Dowsett, Barta and Mortensen) and they had a maximum advantage of more than 5 minutes.

Their action was neutralized with 18 km to go, after the composition of the breakaway had been changed with the counter-attacks from Gilbert, Brandle and Boaro. Bono spent 188 km in the front.

With 10km to go, another Lampre rider, Diego Ulissi, attacked from the peloton, but no other riders supported his action and so the attempt was neutralized two kilometers later.

In that moment, Mori, Pibernik, Bonifazio and Cimolai started the approach to the sprint. Bonifazio and Cimolai could not start the sprint in the front positions, so they were forced to make a comeback which gave them the 9th (Bonifazio) and the 11th (Cimolai) place.

Greipel won the race.

“The team performance was good, the presence of Bono in the main breakaway of the day was really impressive,” Simone Pedrazzini said. “Matteo led the race for almost 190 km, then it was Ulissi’s turn to attack: he was not lucky, because no other riders supported his attempt. In the sprint it was difficult to obtain something better, because Bonifazio and Cimolai could not start their action in good positions“.