Grace Brown (Australia) delivered on her favourite status to claim the Commonwealth Games gold medal in the women's individual time trial.
The 30-year-old, who came to the Games after completing the recent Tour de France Femmes, was the last starter and produced a strong ride on the 28.8km course in Wolverhampton.
She clocked a time of 40:38, putting her 33 seconds clear of Anna Henderson (England) in second place. The bronze medal went to Georgia Williams (New Zealand), who was 1:20 down on Brown.
Only five riders finished within two minutes of Grace Brown, who was comfortable on the lightly rolling and largely untechnical route that started and finished in West Park, heading south out of Wolverhampton in between.
The current Australian time trial champion, who placed fourth in the time trial at last year's Olympic Games, was fastest throughout the course but made her mark in the middle section.
After the twisting exit out of Wolverhampton, she was four seconds to the good over Henderson and 13 seconds up on Williams at the first intermediate checkpoint after 8.9km. By the second one, after 23.2km, she was 29 seconds up on Henderson, and the final 5km saw her finish the job and nudge her winning margin out past the half-minute mark.
Brown won gold wearing the number two dossard after the supposed final rider, Ashleigh Moolman Pasio - plus her two South African teammates - failed to start. 31 rides ended up taking to the course.
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Deputy Editor - Europe. Patrick is an NCTJ-trained journalist who has seven years’ experience covering professional cycling. He has a modern languages degree from Durham University and has been able to put it to some use in what is a multi-lingual sport, with a particular focus on French and Spanish-speaking riders. After joining Cyclingnews as a staff writer on the back of work experience, Patrick became Features Editor in 2018 and oversaw significant growth in the site’s long-form and in-depth output. Since 2021 he has been Deputy Editor - Europe, taking more responsibility for the site’s content as a whole, while still writing and - despite a pandemic-induced hiatus - travelling to races around the world. Away from cycling, Patrick spends most of his time playing or watching other forms of sport - football, tennis, trail running, darts, to name a few, but he draws the line at rugby.
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