The Milano-Torino saw the Astana riders continue their domination of the end of season Italian one day events with Diego Rosa securing the win for the Kazak team. Rafal Majka (Tinkoff-Saxo) was 2nd and Fabio Aru (Astana) place 3rd.

The race provided the riders with a 186km route with the only real difficulty coming in the form of the 5km Superga climb which would have to be tackled twice in the final 25km. On the way to the climb though, Daniel Teklehaimanot found himself in the break of the day, this after Natnael Berhane was also very active in the early part of the race.

eklehaimanot worked with 4 other riders to build a 5 minute lead on the peloton with Astana doing the lions-share of the pacing in the peloton. With a number of climbing stars present, they made sure the threat that Teklehaimanot poised was neutralised just before the first left turn onto the climb.

Team Sky and Astana ramped up the pace on the first ascent and quickly a select group formed, leaving only 30 odd riders in contention over the summit. There were no MTN-Qhubeka p/b Samsung riders in the front group.

With a couple of the World Tour teams having the numerical advantage they pushed the pace all the way back around to the foot of the climb to battle it out for the win. Astana managed to outwit the rest with Rosa taking a crafty solo win after attacking around 2.5km from the finish.

“It is always nice to get into the breakaway. I have been able to do it a few times this year already. The climbs only came right at the end so we couldn’t get a very big gap. Astana were very strong again and they caught us just before the climb. I was happy that I could still show our team colours at the front of the race this late in the season,” Daniel Teklehaimanot said to the MTN website.