There’s a week to go of these World Championships, held in the beautiful city of Bergen in Norway, but if they are as compelling as the opening event then we shall all be in for a fine seven days of action.
Team-Sunweb have already had a season beyond their wildest dreams, and they put yet more icing on a what has been a rich cake of success by taking the women’s team time trial, beating the hot favourites for the title in Boels-Doemans with a perfectly paced ride. They came out on top in a battle that would eventually see victory confirmed only with 12 seconds to go, causing the Dutch trade team to go into raptures.
The landscape for the coming week’s racing is a naturally stunning one, but it has fierce claws and a warning notice would have been served to all contenders when the Orica-Scott DS Matt White called the 42.5km course the hardest he had ever seen.
It didn’t take long for the terrain to bite, with Christina Siggaard dropped before their former World Champion Amber Neben suffered a mechanical that left them down to the bare minimum of just four riders with more than 30 kilometres of the run left to go. The rest of the course was sure to be a fruitless struggle for them, for all that Claudia Koster, Pernille Mathiesen, Sara Penton and Linda Villumsen tried their best for the rest of the ride.
By then, of course, Sunweb had already gone 25 seconds quicker than Virtu, whilst last year’s podium finishers 15 seconds out of Sunweb's time at the first split, with Canyon-Sram six seconds off that split.Cervelo would have the honours at the first check, with Boels down by just four seconds.
Several teams began to struggle to keep six up the climb, whilst Virtu had a split to leave Villumsen and Mathiesen clear at the front whilst they waited for their teammates, with BePink coming down to three as Katia Ragusa struggled to stay in contention for them.
To Virtu’s credit, they would stay intact over the final climb and claw back a great deal of respectability to finish with a time of 58:33.15, a disappointing day overall for them but still a good margin faster than Be Pink, who finished 1:15 and 2:07 up on HiTech Products.
The real battle was taking place behind, as it had become clear that there would be precious little to separate those going for gold. Sunweb posted 43:02 at the second checkpoint, stamping their class on the race, but the six women of Boels Doman would be quicker by them than 12 whole seconds; The early pace of Cervelo Bigla would take its toll, as they were now 16 seconds off Sunweb.
Boels’s challenge looked to have been timed to perfection, but Sunweb had left plenty up their sleeve for the 11 kilometre downhill run into the line, and their time of 55:41.63 was clearly going to take a lot of beating.
Cervelo Bigla limited their losses very well to finish only 28 seconds down and take a temporary second, ahead of the quiet but impressive FDJ squad who had finished with 59:04.67.
But the race was fully on between Boels and Sunweb, with the two basically level at 38km in a thrilling encounter. However, one team had left just enough in the tank to prosper and after an agonising last few kilometres, with 12 seconds left to go, Lucinda Brand, Leah Kirchmann, Floortje Mackaij, Coryn Rivera, Sabrina Stultiens and Ellen van Dijk could get their party deservedly started.
