Cooke wins time trial

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Strong uphill time trialling by HTC-Columbia's Judith Arndt helped the German move into the lead of the Bira stage race in Spain. Great Britain's Nicole Cooke won the individual time trial stage on Saturday morning.

A viciously steep, 5.9km uphill time trial finished in the town of Elgeta. Cooke defeated Arndt in the time trial by 15 seconds, which gave her a 12-second advantage over previous leader Claudia Hausler.

"Judith won this short uphill time trial stage in last year's Bira so she was feeling confident, but she had to change tactics this time because the course was very different," said HTC-Columbia team manager Ronny Lauke. "It was much steeper for the first two kilometres compared with last year's climb.

"She decided to go all out early on and then try and hold her pace for the second part of the ascent. Her strategy worked out well, and now we've got the lead."

Lauke says the HTC-Columbia riders will give their utmost to ensure Arndt wins the Bira for a second year running, but warns that there are two difficult stages left to race. "Sunday is by far the hardest challenge. It's 130 kilometres long and has four classified climbs. Plus the weather isn't getting any better.

"Hausler's closest so she's the biggest threat in theory. But Judith has good form at the moment and the whole team is very motivated. We'll be giving it 100 percent."

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