Brandon McNulty, now an elder-statesman of Team USA at 28, was in reach of his first elite Road World Championships medal for a second time in his career, only to see his stay in a time trial podium hot seat go cold as the final two riders crossed the finish line Sunday.
McNulty crossed the line three riders after Paul Seixas and was just 12 seconds short of the Frenchman's then-first place effort over 39.2km. In the end, McNulty was toppled off the podium for fourth by the final two riders - winner Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) and Filippo Ganna (Italy).
"Ah, once I knew I was not in the hot seat in first, with Remco and Filippo still to go, so you don't really have a chance at the medals. But 12 seconds from the medals is not bad. I knew a medal was somewhat possible, so I wasn't that far off. I'm happy with the ride," McNulty told select media, including Cyclingnews, at the finish.
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"I think it shows I'm good. I put a lot more effort on position stuff since the Tour, since I had quite a bit of time. I think on this course that was super important, because it was technical, but also just completely flat. It was a technical circuit for sure. So I think it showed the work was paying off. Hopefully I can keep getting better."
His Team USA teammate Artem Shmidt competed in his first elite race at Worlds, finishing a respectable 18th. In the last four years, the duo have held titles as USPro elite time trial champions, Shmidt doing so at just 21 and 22 years of age.
"I think I did a pretty decent time in terms of my own sensations. I left mostly everything out there. You know, when you get done with it, you always think you can go a little bit deeper," Shmidt told Cyclingnews and Cycling Weekly.
"We got to see the course yesterday [Saturday] for the first time, but when you do the course with 100 other people warming up on it, you really can't take the corners full speed. So today was really like the first time you got to do it full speed.
"It was a super interesting course. The beginning and the end of it are super technical, and it's a little bit hard to hard to pace. It wasn't the smoothest road in existence, the potholes added another element. It's super easy to lose momentum with the potholes and trying to gain momentum back was super tough. It's not your typical, let's say, flattish TT course where you go out and you do like a certain power number. You kind of really have to choose where you want to invest and where you want to save a bit."
McNulty agreed that the roads were rough and made riders focus. He was most familiar with the final kilometres which he had ridden last year to victory at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, and this year was third. But that familiarity proved not to be an advantage on a long time trial.
"It's the same finish as we always do in the road race here [Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal], so I know it. You hit those corners with a lot of fatigue, and it never feels good, like the last 500 metres. But, I think that was probably the worst time I've done it," he admitted.
The US men's squad will get the full band together this week for the UCI Road World Championships for the elite road race September 27, with all eight riders part of WorldTour or ProTeam squads. Among the squad are USPro champion and ever-attacking Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek) and EF Education-EasyPost teammates Neilson Powless and Sean Quinn.
Shmidt smiled when he talked about that 273.4km contest, noting it was "a completely different effort". He's seen the circuits at his first GP Montréal a week ago.
"The road race is a different type of beast than the time trial. There's a lot of accelerations up the climb," I think for me, I can take some confidence from the TT, that I have a good threshold and good one-hour power to help the guys as much as I can."
McNulty, making his 10th Worlds appearance this week, has mastered the circuits twice before with UAE Team Emirates-XRG, and he told Cyclingnews the US team could very well use the experience of several riders to make something special happen.
"It's the best team I think the US have had. Of course there's going to be crazy good guys from all the nations, so we have our work cut out. There's a ton of strong guys that we still have not ever really beaten before. I mean, if guys like Remco [Evenepoel] and [Mathieu] van der Poel, who did 180k solo today, show up [and do well], it's gonna be hard," he said with a wry smile, referring to Van der Poel's 174km solo feat to win stage 5 at the Tour de Luxembourg in his final race before joining his Dutch team in Montreal.
"But I think we have numbers to at least play our cards well. I think we have a good team to race super aggressively and try to do something. I think if we do everything perfect, we have a good shot at a medal."
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