Carmen Small might have been an outside hope for selection to the USA team for the Olympic Games in Rio before today, but her victory in the US national championship time trial in Winston-Salem has shifted her to the top of the list.
The only rider from the 10-woman Olympic long team to have earned an automatic selection is Megan Guarnier (Boels Dolmans) - by merit of her bronze medal in the World Championship road race and her position at the top of the Women's WorldTour - leaving nine women fighting for the three other spots.
Trailing Guarnier, Evelyn Stevens, Kristin Armstrong and Coryn Rivera in the UCI WorldTour rankings, Small knew that the time trial today was important.
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"I've had a solid spring, I was really happy with it. But you can only control what you can control. Today was really important with that, to be able to show that I am a strong American time trialist. That was my mind set - this is it. It was go time. I needed to come out there and prove myself, which I hope I did," Small told Cyclingnews.
To show up and beat two-time Olympic time trial champion Armstrong by over a minute was a big boon for Small's chances for the Olympic selection, but it was a painful effort.
"It was brutal. I rode it for the first time on Tuesday and I was pretty shocked," Small said. "I have to be honest, I was intimidated by it. There is no flat out there, you can't ride it like a proper time trial where it's usually flat or technical. Sometimes there are hills but not like this, where it is constantly up and down. You had to really be smart how you rode it. I was lucky to have a good team behind me. I spoke a lot with my coach Corey Hart about how tactically to ride it. I think that was pretty crucial, just to know how to ride it."
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