It may be Ellen van Dijk’s third time trial title at the UCI Road World Championships but it is perhaps the one that is the biggest surprise.
The Dutch rider had bid farewell to her rainbow jersey on Saturday, tucking it to the bottom of her bag, as she felt the time trial course in Wollongong was not one where she could defend her title.
It turns out, however, that it was.
"I’m actually a bit surprised to win," Van Dijk said at a media conference in Wollongong following the victory. "For sure I prepared the best way possible but for me I never thought it would be the perfect course.
"My last race was Europeans and I didn’t feel very good there so I also had to take a little bit of time off and reset and refocus so I had quite good preparation towards this.
"But I didn’t know what it was worth because I had no reference and also on this course it was difficult to know what to expect."
"I'm just super happy that I could win it again. As I said, I didn't expect it. I'd kind of said goodbye to my jersey yesterday."
Australian rider Grace Brown had set the early benchmark and sat in the hot seat nervously watching to see if she could deliver that prized home rainbow jersey, with last starter Van Dijk the only rider who ever really looked a serious threat, particularly after Annemiek van Vleuten had fallen well short of the target.
But then Van Dijk was on top right from the start, hitting the top of the table from the first intermediate checkpoint, even through the more technical corner-heavy section of the 34.2km course that started and finished in the coastal city of Wollongong.
Brown had gone faster through the second lap of the circuit, which headed through the city centre and its surrounds, but it wasn't enough to stop Van Dijk, who held onto the rainbow jersey – which she first won in 2013 – with a time of 44:29, 12 seconds faster than Brown.
"My first title was when I wasn't the favourite and it was really, really nice," said Van Dijk of her 2013 triumph. "Last year was super emotional because I chased it for so long and finally I got it. This one, I'm still kind of processing it. It's a bit more of a surprise."
It may have been a surprise, but that didn't mean she didn't do everything possible to make it happen, working hard to counter a course that wasn't ideal for her.
"It had a lot of momentum changes, up down, left, right, corners," said Van Dijk. "I don't mind riding corners, but I don't like to change momentum all the time so I really trained for that in the past couple of weeks.
"I did efforts where I changed my rhythm constantly, so I tried to prepare in a super specific way. And it turned out to be good."
