"You had to come out of that last corner in first place if you wanted to win," observed Trentin, whose first half of the season last year was blighted with injuries but who still managed to claim the European road race title and a stage of the Tour of Guangxi.
Trentin fulfilled his own race analysis to perfection, not only coming through the race's final long curve at a roundabout in first place but even leading into what was a near-chicane as well.
The last time Trentin came close to such a win so early in the season was in 2012, when he placed second in a Volta ao Algarve stage. This time around though, with no injuries to trouble him, he has clearly hit the ground running in 2019
Trentin also came over the last third-category climb, some 40 kilometres from the line, well placed, unlike Dylan Groenewegen, who needed to be paced back on by his Jumbo-Visma teammates.
"When you're not feeling strong, everything gets more complicated," Trentin observed, "but I've had a good winter, it went well. We drove hard on that climb to make it tough for other sprinters and I could finish off well.
"It's great for my morale and great for the team's morale too. The level of racers here is high, too, so to succeed even so is very important."
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Trentin paid tribute to his team, who joined forces with Astana on the hilly roads towards the final climb to make the race hard and put the likes of Groenewegen in difficulty. But he still had a lot to do himself in the finale.
"The team was amazing today," Trentin told Eurosport. "We had a plan together with Astana during the race actually to make it as hard as possible for the pure sprinters like [Alexander] Kristoff (UAE Teeam Emirates) and Groenewegen and company. It was working pretty good, actually, [Esteban] Chaves and [Mikel] Nieve did an amazing job. Then [Christopher] Juul-Jensen and even Adam Yates were pulling.
"In the finale I was on the wheel of Luka [Mezgec] and when I saw someone start from really far away, I don't know who, I jumped on the wheel of [Nacer] Bouhanni (Cofidis) and started the sprint with maximum speed and it worked."
Trentin later confirmed that he would be heading for the Classics, and either the Giro d'Italia or the Tour de France.
"First we'll finish the Classics and then we'll see what we do. But if I can win now, I'll take it."
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
