European Championships: France claim Mixed Relay TTT title

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France snatched victory from Italy in the mixed relay team time trial at the European Championships in Emmen, with their women’s trio overcoming a 20-second deficit at the halfway point, completing the 38.4km course in a winning time of 44:23.

The Italian trio of Edoardo Affini, Matteo Sobrero and Mattia Cattaneo went faster than anyone at the 19.3km changeover point, leaving the experienced group of Elena Cecchini, Vittoria Guazzini and Soraya Paladin to try and hold on.

France were the closest after the change as Bruno Armirail, Rémi Cavagna, and Benjamin Thomas set a time just 20 seconds back, and once their female trio of Audrey Cordon-Ragot, Juliette Labous and Cédrine Kerbaol had gained seven seconds on the Italian lead by the intermediate checkpoint, it was clearly going to come down to the wire.

Kerbaol and Labous emptied the final reserves in the final kilometre with the pain plastered all over the former’s face after an incredible second leg alongside Cordon-Ragot, with an eventual winning margin of just 4 seconds for the six-rider French team.

“We knew we had a really strong women’s team, and the objective was to put them in the best condition, and they did really an incredible performance,” said an elated Benjamin Thomas in his post-race interview. “To gain like 25 seconds on a race like this is very impressive.

“We are really happy; it was more or less the same team as the Worlds and I came in. It’s incredible, and we don’t realise.”

The emotions were clear over the line as the French team celebrated a thrilling victory ahead of a strong Italian team with Germany in third, finishing 23 seconds down through the team of Max Walscheid, Jannik Steimle, Miguel Heidemann, Lisa Klein, Franziska Koch and Mieke Kröger.

The pre-race favourites were the World Champions, Switzerland, but they fielded a weakened Swiss side after the injuries sustained by Stefan Küng in his horrific crash in yesterday’s men’s individual time trial caused him to end his season early.

Despite the best efforts of newly crowned women’s European ITT champion Marlen Reusser, the Swiss women were unable to overcome the huge deficit, and they eventually finished sixth.

“I’m so sorry for this [Küng’s] crash, and it’s good that he is not even more severely injured, but it’s not nice for him and for us for sure we miss a big, big motor, or the motor of this group,” said Reusser sporting her mixed relay rainbow bands which she won alongside Küng in August.

“I think we all gave our best, and there were some young guys that had a chance to also try this one time, so it was nice for us, but yeah, we missed him [Küng].”

The Netherlands and Poland rounded out the top five through their respective teams of Sjoerd Bax, Daan Houle, Jos van Emden, Loes Adegeest, Riejanne Markus and Shirin van Anrooij and Maciej Bodnar, Piotr Brożyna, Michał Kwiatkowski, Marta Jaskulska, Kasia Niewiadoma and Karolina Kumiega with the Dutch side just one second off the podium.

Results

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