Tom Dumoulin and his teammates were surprised but happy after Team Sunweb completed a women's and men's double victory in the team time trials at the World Championships in Bergen.
Team Sky, 2016 winners Quick-Step Floors and BMC were the big three favourites to win the world title and share the medals. However it was Team Sunweb that grabbed the gold – there are no rainbow jerseys awarded in the 42.5km TTT – beating BMC by eight seconds, with Team Sky at 22 seconds and Quick-Step Floors down in fourth place at 35 seconds.
Dumoulin, Michael Matthews, Lennard Kamna, Wilco Kelderman, Søren Kragh Andersen and Sam Oomen had to endure an emotional wait in the hot seat after their ride but when Team Sky failed to beat their time they started celebrating.
ADVERTISEMENT
"I expected we'd fight for the podium because we had a strong team for this course but to get away with the win is crazy," Dumoulin said with his usual grin of happiness.
"It wasn't a surprise that we did well because it felt strong and it felt fast. We didn't overcomplicate things today. We raced hard and trusted that we'd go fast without overthinking it. We did it on feeling and apparently that worked."
Dumoulin was the powerhouse of Team Sunweb but he was careful not to derail the effort of the six-rider team. He paced his teammates on the key 1.5-kilometre climb after 30 kilometres and then did some long, high-speed turns on the front. All the other riders also played a huge part in racing at over 50 kilometres on the rolling road to Bergen.
No secret to success
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/2wza1Zj
No comments:
Post a Comment