Sam Bennett was hoping to impress in his debut at Dečuninck Quickstep, but was unable to match sprint rivals Caleb Yuan (Lotto Soudal) and Elia Viviani (Cofidis), finishing in 16th place.

Yuan won his fourth Tour Down Under warm-up race for the fifth time, while Viviani finished second after a slow start. Bennett's lead-out man, Michael Morkoff, finished seventh. Bennett was expected to fight for the win, but the Detunink-Quickstep lead group never formed on the final lap as EF Procycling took control and Ewan and Viviani secured good positions.

Bennett can only hope that he will learn from his mistakes and fight back in the Tour Down Under, which begins on Tuesday.

"It was pretty slippery. I lost a lot of positions. But we'll learn from our mistakes and try again," she said, emphasizing that the Adelaide city circuit was wet and greasy after several showers that hit the one-hour race.

Bennett joked before the race that he did not want to be "the first sprinter who didn't win the Dečuninck-Quickstep" after moving to the Belgian team to replace Viviani. But his performance in the criterium had nothing to do with pressure.

"No, I was way behind even before the last corner, and when I came out of the corner I was way behind too," he explained, going into the technical details of racing on a fast but wet circuit and taking on a criterium expert like Ewan.

"When it's wet, you're already sprinting about 20 meters ahead. We had to catch it and aim higher. With 200 meters to go, it exploded. There was nothing left, nothing we could do."