Video: Mechanical hampers Ellen van Dijk Worlds time trial

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A mechanical ended any hopes of Ellen van Dijk contending for the medals in the women’s elite time trial at the World Championships in Richmond on Tuesday. The 2013 winner was forced to settle for seventh place.

The Dutch rider started slowly and was 16h at the first split, but she recovered in the second half of the race to steadily move up. However, she fell short of winner Linda Villumsen (New Zealand) by 53 seconds.

Van Dijk’s result only told part of the story, however, as she suffered a mechanical problem during the race. Her back brake was rubbing on her wheel, and in turn she suffered a slow puncture. By the time she came through the mix zone her tire was completely flat. Despite the bad luck, van Dijk refused to blame the mechanical for her performance, which was remarkable considering she broke a collarbone less than two months ago.

“My tire was flat and my brake was rubbing against my wheel, but still I wasn’t feeling great today. I wasn’t good enough, so it’s not just the mechanical. It’s completely flat but I think that it was going down during the race. I don’t know.

“It slows you down, but I was more than a minute behind so I don’t think that it cost me one minute. Of course I’m disappointed. I really wanted to be in contention for the win again, but I just didn’t reach the level again that I wanted to. I broke my collarbone seven weeks ago and I wanted to be good here again. That’s it, I have to deal with it. It tried everything but it didn’t work and that’s all that I can really say about it.”

In this exclusive video for Cyclingnews, van Dijk talks about her performance and the Dutch team’s chances ahead of Saturday’s women’s road race.

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