The final day of racing at Tirreno-Adriatico saw a stage design that was very much a day of two halves, with several climbs packed into the opening half of the stage before a pancake flat closing 80 kilometres. Setting out with a plan, the team had aimed to make the opening part of the stage as hard as possible for the other sprint teams but with no other squads playing ball and pre-stage finisher Marius Mayrhofer stating he wasn’t feeling well enough to go for it, the plan was changed to go with Alberto Dainese in the finale.
Henri Vandenabeele then attacked out of the peloton to bridge to the original break of seven, making it a strong eight man leading group, while the rest of the team supported Dainese in the bunch. Vandenabeele’s group were given a maximum advantage of three minutes and coming onto the flat terrain it was already down to just over a minute. Yet, the break had held something back and kept the pressure on the peloton for the next 70 kilometres, only being caught just inside five kilometres to go. The team then worked well to drop Dainese off towards the front of the bunch in the closing kilometres, before he navigated the technical finale well, launching his sprint and coming with speed to take a fine third place at the end of the day.
