World Championships: Canyon-SRAM win women's team time trial

Canyon-SRAM won the first title of the 2018 UCI Road World Championships in Innsbruck with victory in the women’s team time trial. Alena Amialiusik, Alice Barnes, Hannah Barnes, Elena Cecchini, Lisa Klein and Trixi Worrack completed the 54.7km course in a blazing time of 1:01:47, beating Boels Dolmans into second place by 22 seconds.

The German team, bedecked with multicolour disc wheels, put in the best-paced effort of the day. They came through the 22.8km checkpoint as the closest challenger to the fast-starting Wiggle High5, and they later held onto their full complement of six riders all the way to finish where other rivals struggled to do so.

2017 champions Team Sunweb completed the final podium, finishing third just seven seconds behind Boels Dolmans after a late charge to the line. Wiggle High5, who had surprisingly set the fastest time at the 22.8km checkpoint, were down to four riders soon afterwards and faded to fourth at the finish, 57 seconds down.

The victory is the fifth time the Canyon-SRAM team has won the event, albeit with different sponsors in the past – as Specialized-Lululemon in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and as Velocio-SRAM in 2015. Trixi Worrack was part of all of those teams, making it five TTT golds for her.

“For sure it’s really nice,” Worrack said after the finish. “We didn’t win one TTT this year so it was a bit of a surprise, but I think only for the others, because we knew what we could do if we had the perfect day – we could finish on the podium or even on top.

“It was pretty difficult because it was a long course and we’ve never done a 55km course so we had to time it really well and not over-pace, but it was perfect.”

“We’ve trained really hard for this,” Hannah Barnes added. “We put everything into it – every day we were getting smoother and better on the course. We’re just really happy.”

How it happened

The 55km course ran from the Area 47 waterpark in Ötztal to Innsbruck. It was a largely downhill course, saw for a few lumps along the way, contributing to the fast times on the day – Canyon-SRAM completed the race at a speed of 53.8kph.

Italian team BePink kicked off proceedings of the final Worlds TTT to include trade teams. It was the second team off, Team Virtu, who set the early running though, coming through the checkpoint with a time of 26:22 and becoming the only team of the first half to go under 1:04:00.

Wiggle High5 flew through the early kilometres, blitzing through the checkpoint 48 seconds faster than anyone else to that point. Canyon and Boels came close, and vitally held on to their six riders as Katie Archibald and Emilia Fahlin both dropped away from the Wiggle train shortly after the checkpoint.

Team Sunweb were curiously off the pace, just fifth at the checkpoint, 36 seconds behind Wiggle. The German team would put on a late charge but couldn’t get close to Canyon’s winning time. Meanwhile Mitchelton-Scott, who were fourth at the checkpoint, faded in the second half, finishing 1:30 down on the gold medallists.

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