One day after their clean sweep of the podium in the Memorial Marco Pantani, Daniele Bennati (Tinkoff-Saxo) continued the domination of the Italian national team in the one-day races in their home country by winning the GP di Prato. Having made it into a five-rider group with his in-form teammate Vincenzo Nibali, the veteran beat Marco Marcato (Wanty), Davide Rebellin (CCC), Luca Wackermann (Southeast) and Nibali in the sprint.

Italy is among the perennial favourites for the World Championships and they traditionally have a series of one-day races in the week prior to the battle for the rainbow jersey, allowing their selected riders to test their condition. This has often allowed them to gain some confidence but rarely have they dominated the races like they have done this year.

Still riding for his Astana team, Vincenzo Nibali was the star in the Coppa Agostoni and Coppa Bernocchi where he took second and first respectively. Yesterday he rode for his national team and was part of the clean sweep of the podium as he joined forces with eventual winner Diego Ulissi and Giovanni Visconti to time trial their way to the finish of the Memorial Marco Pantani.

Today Nibali again played a key role for his team as he was part of a five-rider move that managed to hold off the fast-approaching peloton in the GP di Prato. With his fast teammate Daniele Bennati in the group, he sacrificed himself and the veteran paid back the favour by taking what is nowadays a rare win.

"Today was we made the action when there were four passages of the Rocca ascent left," he told Spaziociclismo. "We quickly found together, there was a lot of wind. We always maintained the high speed so it was hard . The average of the race was really high today.

"The condition is very good, after three major breaks in recent days, the legs even responded very well today and here, 250 meters from the finish line, I tried to launch the sprint. I'm not very good at this but I think after a long break we were all very tired."