Matteo Trentin and Luka Mezgec celebrate winning the Hammer Series(Image credit: Hammer Series)
Caleb Ewan and Luka Mezgec led the charge for Mitchelton-Scott(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Slovenian national champion Luka Mezgec has been in form but is working in the leadout train at the Tour of Britain for Caleb Ewan(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Luka Mezgec (Orica-Scott)(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Luka Mezgec leading Mitchelton-Scott in the TTT(Image credit: Tim de Waele/Getty Images Sport)
Luka Mezgec will remain with Mitchelton-Scott until the end of the 2020 season after signing a two-year contract extension with the Australian squad. The Slovenian joined the team from Giant-Alpecin ahead of the 2016 season.
Mezgec enjoyed considerable success on home roads in 2017, winning a rare hat-trick of national titles in cyclo-cross, road and mountain bike. He also won a stage of the Tour of Slovenia and the Arnhem-Veenendaal Classic. Later in the season, Mezgec was a part of the team that helped Simon Yates to overall victory at the Vuelta a España.
“I am very happy to extend my contract with the team, which to me is a lot more than just that. The relationship between each other here is amazing and that is a great booster for the work we do,” Mezgec said.
“Cycling is a hard sport and if you work in such an environment as we have here in Mitchelton Scott, you can always suffer a little longer, help others more than you think you are capable of and go for the result with support you can normally only dream about.”
The best season of Mezgec’s career came in 2014, when he won the final stage of the Giro d’Italia in Trieste and also claimed a hat-trick of stages at the Volta a Catalunya.
During his first three years in the GreenEdge set-up, Mezgec was part of Caleb Ewan’s lead-out train but he will not follow the Australian to Lotto Soudal in 2019. Roger Kluge is the only other Mitchelton-Scott rider to make the switch to Lotto Soudal.
Although Mitchelton-Scott has shifted its focus to the Grand Tours in recent seasons thanks to the talents of Simon and Adam Yates and Esteban Chaves, Mezgec is one of three fast finishers on the 2019 roster, together with Daryl Impey and European champion Matteo Trentin. Directeur sportif Matt White hailed the extension of Mezgec’s contract.
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“Luka is a very fast and versatile rider who knows not only how to win, but also how to support his teammates. He is a lot like Matteo Trentin in the sense that he can work successfully as a leader in his own right or a lead-out guy for a pure sprinter,” White said.
“Along with our other opportunists Matteo and Daryl Impey, it’s going to be exciting to see Luka continue to develop with us over the next two years. They are all riders who can win on all kinds of terrain and it’s great for us to have so many strong options going forward.”
