Mireia Benito overcomes tough uphill course and extreme heat to net third straight gold in Spanish National Time Trial Championships

Mireia Benito (AG Insurance-Soudal) secured her third straight Spanish National Time Trial Champion's title despite facing a radically different course to other years, a 14 kilometre uphill TT with 727 metres of vertical climbing.

The time trial was run in extreme heat on the slopes of Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, with temperatures reaching the mid-30s in the afternoon, and with the last four kilometres more than 2,000 metres above sea level.

Benito blasted through all the checkpoints with the best time, crossing the finishing line above the Sierra Nevada High Performance Centre - used by many athletes for altitude training - 95 seconds ahead of recent Tour Féminin International des Pyrénées winner Usoa Ostolaza (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi).

In a hard-fought battle for bronze, Paula Blasi (UAE Team ADQ) topped Ariana Gilabert (Eneicat-CM Team) for third. Mavi García (Jayco-AlUla) was fifth at 2:40.

"It's been a very different time trial to the ones we were doing in previous years, particularly when it came to calculating your strength, because in the higher part with that altitude you had to be really careful," Benito said afterwards.

"It was about - gauge your effort, gauge your effort, gauge your effort - and not go flat out at any point.

"I don't like knowing other people's times, some people do but I know what I can do and if I look at other peoples times, it can throw me off my plan.

"I had to go at a very specific pace, concentrate on more than my feelings more than my power output. So I did that, I knew what I had to do and I could go all the way up to the top according to plan."

Benito was very pleased to be able to take the win as she has had a tough season, with illness making her a last-minute withdrawal from the Vuelta a España Femenina this spring. The Catalan rider's DNS before stage 1 was rendered all the tougher to digest because this year the Vuelta began on home soil in Catalunya.

"I'm very happy to get this because it's been a very complicated period for me and my last time trial was really bad so I was nervous about this one," Benito added.

"But it's a discipline I like a lot, so I really wanted it to go out and see what I could do if I followed the protocol and trusted myself. So to get the win today makes me very happy."

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