HEW Cyclassics in 2005, won by Italian
Filippo Pozzato. The event was created in 1996 as a 1.5 race, the lowest classification of professional races. The first edition was its shortest ever, totaling just 160 km, won by Italian
Rossano Brasi. HEW, ''Hamburg's
Electricity Works'', served as the race's title sponsor. In 1997
Jan Ullrich won the second edition amid hordes of fans, two weeks after winning the
Tour de France, and the race gained prestige fast. With cycling's fast-growing popularity in Germany in the 1990s, the race became part of the
UCI Road World Cup in 1998, cycling's ten highest-classified one-day races. It replaced the
Wincanton Classic, Britain's only
cycling classic, as the seventh leg of the World Cup. Dutchman
Léon van Bon outsprinted
Michele Bartoli to win the third edition; the distance was increased to 253 km.
Erik Zabel was the second German winner of the HEW Cyclassics in 2001. In 2002, Belgian
classics specialist
Johan Museeuw won his eleventh and last World Cup race, leading out the sprint from a group of ten.
Vattenfall Cyclassics (in red) during the
2015 Vattenfall Cyclassics. In 2002, race sponsor HEW was overtaken by Swedish electricity conglomerate
Vattenfall and was renamed
Vattenfall Europe Hamburg. Vattenfall, Swedish for
Waterfall, became the race's new title sponsor in
2006. In 2005, the race was included in the inaugural
UCI ProTour, successor of the World Cup. After the disappearance of the
Deutschland Tour in 2009, it remained the only German race at cycling's highest international level. Since 2011 it is one of 24 races of the
UCI World Tour. In 2012,
UCI extended the race's World Tour license until at least 2016. Because of its mostly flat course, the race is considered a
sprinter's contest and has ended in a mass sprint uninterrupted since
2004. Some of the best sprinters of their generation, including
Robbie McEwen,
Óscar Freire,
Alexander Kristoff and
André Greipel, are among the winners of the race. American sprinter
Tyler Farrar, winner of the
2009 and
2010 Cyclassics, is the only rider to have won the race two times. The
2013 race was met with fierce protesting unrelated to the race. Hamburg residents were upset with Vattenfall's environmental policies and its attempts to acquire ownership of the local power grid.
EuroEyes Cyclassics In 2015 it was announced that Vattenfall would not extend its partnership with the Hamburg Cyclassics, forcing organizers to search for a new sponsor to provide the estimated 800.000 Euro, a third of the race's budget. From
2016 EuroEyes, a large German provider of laser eye treatment, Femto-LASIK, lens surgeries, and refrative lens exchanges, was the new title sponsor. Australian sprinter
Caleb Ewan won the race after the initial winner,
Nacer Bouhanni, was relegated.
Bemer Cyclassics From 2021 to 2024, the race was known as the Bemer Cyclassics.
ADAC Cyclassics The race partnered with the
Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club in 2025, and was renamed the ADAC Cyclassics accordingly. ==Route==