Kohl's race "didn't go according to plan"
Austrian Bernhard Kohl had hoped to shine at the world championships in his homeland, but...
Austrian Bernhard Kohl had hoped to shine at the world championships in his homeland, but "unfortunately it didn't go according to plan. I had to leave the race, totally exhausted, after seven laps," he said on his website, www.bernhardkohl.de. The Austrian team didn't have a rider in the main escape group. "We waited a long time and discussed whether we should lead the peloton to go after them. When they got a 14 minute advantage, we had to. The advantage would have been too large otherwise. Together with Paco Wrolich I went to the front. The Swiss helped us, but we had to do most of the work. I rode at full speed for a long time, until I just couldn't any more," he says. "I fell back and saw that I couldn't even keep up with the field any more. My strength was at an end, and I dropped out.
"Despite everything, we can be satisfied with our performance, even without a medal. We cut down the advantage to four minutes and did the ground work that allowed the peloton to eventually catch them," he noted. "That gave our sprinters the chance for a podium spot. It's too bad that it didn't work out that way, but the others were simply too strong."

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