Sam Bennett may not have come away from Rund um Köln with a hoped-for second victory of the season on Sunday but his Bora-hansgrohe team dominated and won with hometown hero Nils Politt.
The German team placed no fewer than four riders in the top 10; Politt winning solo before Danny van Poppel claimed 2nd, with Sam Bennett 5th and Ryan Mullen - after another impressive ride throughout the race - taking 10th.
The bunch split in very unusual circumstances with some 145km still to race in the 199.3km event, run on a circuit dotted with small climbs. At the 145km marker a six-man breakaway was up the road but an incident about 35 riders back in the bunch caused a split.
It occurred at the base of a small climb, with many of the riders forced to unclip and some even deciding to try and run up the start of the hill, in a bid to get away from the stalled pack of riders.
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Though that hold-up - the cause of which was not clear - was very brief it resulted in a group of about 35 rides gaining a gap on the remainder of the peloton. And when Politt saw the field was split, he rode hard over the top of the climb before Bora-hansgrohe kicked into action as a unit and drove the pace on the front.
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The six-man breakaway was soon caught and the gap between the first large group on the road and the remains of the main bunch continued to grow, with Mullen helping to drive it forward. A number of teams back in the peloton - especially Lotto-Soudal - tried to close the gap, but to no avail.
Later in the race Bora-hansgrohe decided to attack from the front rather than wait for a sprint with Bennett, even though he was in the lead group with his main lead-out men, Mullen and Van Poppel.
With about 55km to go, Politt got clear with team mate Van Poppel and Nikias Arndt (Team DSM). That trio opened a decisive gap of the rest of the group and with 5km remaining Politt attacked again and managed to get clear solo.
Van Poppel won the battle for 2nd place, finishing 13 seconds down, with the out-numbered Arndt in 3rd at 18 seconds. Just 30 seconds later the remainder of the initial large front group sprinted it out for 4th place, with Dylan Groenewegen (BikeExchange-Jayco) proving faster than Bennett and Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin Fenix), in 5th and 6th.
