In 2023 Matej Mohorič (Slovenia) headed UCI Gravel World Championships on the back of a season with a long list of wins, including a Tour de France stage, and dominating form that meant not even a late crash could stop him from taking the rainbow jersey in the discipline. This year, in the race from Beek to Maastricht, the circumstances were completely different.
"I'm so tired," Mohorič told Cyclingnews after crossing the line of the World Championships in the Netherlands and it wasn't just from the race, it was from the entire season.
"The fatigue caught up to me," he said, after constantly being on the chase in a race that he had faced following illness two days earlier.
"It's the first year that I'm looking forward to some time off the bike. I really like to ride my bike, but I don't want to see it for three weeks," he added with a chuckle.
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Even though the Slovenian may be ready to step of the bike for a while, there was no giving in for the rider who still has one last race on his schedule for the year – the Japan Cup – and in the end the result in the Netherlands was a more than respectable third. Mohorič, who had been on the back foot early, found his equilibrium as the race went on.
"The pushing for position was on and I got caught out on a couple of occasions. I crawled my way back to the peloton a few times," Mohorič said.
"With all the fatigue I'm carrying from all the racing, the motivation at one point was quite low but then I managed to get back," he said.
"I saw everyone was really tired from all the sprinting in the first hour and then I found my good legs. Actually, I found a good rhythm."
Mohorič and Félix Stehli (Switzerland) moved out of the peloton, caught the chase group and then went in pursuit of leaders Florian Vermeersch (Belgium), Floris Van Tricht (Belgium) and Frits Biesterbos (Netherlands).
"Unfortunately, my companion from Switzerland wasn't enjoying good legs so much. So, yeah, it was, I think, quite hard for him to hang on, but he told me straight from the start that he's going to do his best and, fair play, he did still pull through sometimes," said Mohorič.
While the pair didn't quite catch the riders at the front of the race, with Van Tricht falling away, Mohorič still managed to take to the podium after finishing 1:23 behind Florian Vermeersch and 43 seconds behind Biesterbos. So there was no season-redeeming win for Mohorič but third as the Bahrain Victorious rider crossed the line was probably just about the best outcome he could have hoped for under the circumstances.
"I think even if I did manage to crawl myself back to the Florian's group he would probably have been impossible to beat today. I know how strong he was in this final of the season," Mohorič said.
It was another podium to add to a season where he took second at Tour de la Provence on stage 2 and second overall plus third on the final stage of the Tour de France in what will end as a rare win-free season. That's unless things change in Japan, of course, where he is on the preliminary start list.
"I learned many things this year," said Mohorič. "I had the worst year of my career, results-wise, but I was in my best-ever condition on more than one occasion. That is a contradiction, but it was just the way it was.
"The level is getting better every year, and I still think I got the level on a few occasions where I could actually win a WorldTour race, but it's just that the stars didn't align, and there was always something going wrong.
"I was probably wanting too much, pushing my body over the limit on a few occasions, and now I will move on from that and try to really get things into the right place. Hopefully, next year we can get some nice results with Bahrain."
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