Visma | Lease a Bike and Brennan fall short in Coppa Bernocchi as Godon delivers farewell gift to AG2R

You would almost forget it because of the European Championships, but in Italy, the autumn races are already in full swing. Last weekend there were two races again, with UAE Emirates-XRG winning both. On Saturday, Isaac del Toro won the Giro dell'Emilia, and a day later, in addition to Tadej Pogacar's European Championship title, it was Adam Yates' turn to win the Coppa Agostoni.

On Monday, there was another race, the Coppa Bernocchi. Before the race, Giacomo Nizzolo said goodbye before his last race. It's a race in which the sprinters usually have a chance, but that didn't stop a strong leading group of six riders from attacking in the opening phase.

Gianni Vermeersch (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Ethan Hayter (Soudal Quick-Step), Alexandre Balmer (Solution Tech), Xabier Azparren (Q36.5), Samuel Quaranta (MBH), and Joel Suter (Tudor) joined forces, but control was also there. Van Visma | Lease a Bike, which had one of the top favorites in its ranks in Matthew Brennan.

For Quaranta and Balmer, the pace was already too fast in this race, which took place in beautiful weather conditions. Lidl-Trek tried to take advantage of this by making the race more difficult halfway through, with Quinn Simmons and Albert Withen Philipsen playing an active role. Visma | Lease a Bike, including Sepp Kuss, also joined in with those attacks, where fast riders such as Jordan Labrosse (Decathlon AG2R), Michael Matthews (Jayco AlUla), and Benjamin Thomas (Cofidis) were also present.

They formed a new breakaway group, without UAE. That meant Jay Vine had to chase, which of course provoked reactions. This included Brennan, who was not necessarily aiming for the sprint. He highlighted this shortly after with his own attack. Quinten Hermans (Alpecin-Deceuninck) jumped with him, and together they caught up with the leading group.

It was a perfect situation for Visma | Lease a Bike, which now had two men at the front. They tried to capitalize on this with an attack by Kuss: the American made sure that the competitors had to work hard. But behind the leading group, they didn't stand still. In fact, a small group caught up with them. Vine was the main instigator.

He brought Bjorn Koerdt (Picnic PostNL), Andrea Bagioli (Lidl-Trek), and the EF Education duo Vincenzo Albanese and Mikkel Honoré with him—twelve men at the front, with several duos. The peloton sensed their chance and picked up the pace: the gap was only 30 seconds with 25 kilometers to go, and the peloton was closing in.

That was the signal for Vine to launch his attack. The Australian chose a good moment, but Lidl-Trek closed the gap again. The cooperation was initially challenging to find, but they managed to reconnect with each other. That was crucial: the lead, which had dropped to 15 seconds, increased again. A setback for Brennan was the loss of Kuss: the Brit had to continue solo.

However, the peloton had also picked up speed again, and it became incredibly exciting. In the last 3 kilometers, the peloton finally merged. However, the domestiques in the pack had been exhausted: an attack by Simmons and Alessandro Covi (UAE) seemed promising, but it ended up being a sprint. French champion Godon was the strongest.