Mitchelton-Scott crush competition at Hammer Hong Kong

Since its debut last year, Velon’s Hammer Series has grown into a three-round event with races in Norway (Stravanger), the Netherlands (Limburg) and Hong Kong. Australian WorldTour team Mitchelton-Scott was dominant throughout the series after sweeping the first event in May.

Despite dropping the second round in Limburg to Quick-Step, Mitchelton maintained an overall lead heading into the final round in Hong Kong thanks to a victory in the Hammer Chase.

Mitchelton-Scott, led by Matteo Trentin (ITA), Roger Kluge (GER), Luka Mezgec (SLO) and Cameron Meyer’s (AUS) collection of double points on Lap 6, won the Hammer Sprint with Quick-Step and Bora-Hansgrohe rounding out the podium. They followed it up with a solid third-place effort on the Hammer Chase behind both Tom Dumoulin’s Team Sunweb and Philippe Gilbert’s Quick-Step to take the race and series titles.

"It was a really hard race, the points race and then straight away the chase so we didn’t have too much time to recover, but it is pretty nice and I actually really like it," said Trentin.

"That is the good thing about the Hammer Series, we can race in the city, we made a circuit in one of the biggest city’s in the world so I think people really enjoyed the show that we put on today."

The 29-year-old Italian’s Australian team-mate concurred with the Mitchelton road captain.

"It is a really good way to round out the season," said Meyer. "It is an important event for us, it is big in the world of cycling. For us to win the series is really important and to finish it off in such a big city like Hong Kong is really good.

"I am pretty wrecked, we didn’t have much rest between the Hammer Sprint and the Hammer Chase so it is a hard format. It is exciting race and I think the fans enjoy it and the riders really get in to it.

"There’s a lot going on in the race, it is really tough but I think there is a future for this style of racing and I really like it."