Cancellara happy with his gold

CSC has a world champion in its ranks now with Fabian Cancellara, the Swiss strong man who pummelled all the opposition to win the men's world time trial championships last week. Cancellara, who also won Paris-Roubaix this year, described the win to team-csc.com as "...a major relief. I've been working towards this for so long. It's my specialty, so of course I've pushed myself to the limit in order to be the best in this particular discipline."

Cancellara was a dual time trial World Champion as a junior rider and also won a silver medal in the U23 championships. At the finish in Salzburg, Cancellara didn't even need to sprint across the line, as he did a couple of weeks ago in the Vuelta, where David Millar beat him by less than a second.

"I'd received reports from Kim Andersen in the sports director's car during the race," he added. "A couple of kilometres before the finish, he said I could raise my hands whenever I felt like it, because my lead was so big. But I just told him, that I didn't wanna know, after my narrow defeat in Spain."

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During the race, Cancellara opted for a high cadence, and his ascent of the Gschaiderberg was a marked contrast to the other competitors as he spun his way up the climb. "I always try to keep a high cadence instead of riding in a big gear, but lots of people have told me, the cadence was really high on Thursday. I haven't seen the race on TV yet, but I will when I get back home to Switzerland. After my second place in the Vuelta time trial, I worked on getting the perfect position on the bike and the right cadence and some other things, and it all came together nicely and it was just a perfect day."

Cancellara said that he was more surprised by how well he did in the road race on Sunday, where he made several attacks in the lead group towards the end. "The race started out quite bad for me, I felt like I hadn't recovered well from the time trial, but tactically I did the right thing, and then my legs were great in the end," says Cancellara, who with about 10 kilometres to go, tried to split the lead group ahead of the final climb.

"I felt so good, I just had to do something, cause I knew I wasn't able to win a bunch sprint, so I went full gas and hoped the other riders wouldn't be able to follow me. In the Tour of Denmark I won a stage the same way, but unfortunately it didn't work out this time."

Cancellara will probably end his season in his home country in Sunday's Züri Metzgete. He finished by thanking all his fans: "There were lots of fans from all the Nordic countries and from Switzerland, who all supported me in Salzburg. It was incredible to see so many Team CSC fans and fans from Switzerland - it was a very beautiful day."