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First ever medal in the world championships The gold medal went to new world champions, Boels Dolmans, who were 1 minutes 57 faster while Canyon SRAM won the silver medal. The result means it's the first medal for Cervélo Bigla Pro Cycling Team in the world championships after undergoing new management two years ago. Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio describes the how things didn’t go perfectly but the team showed great courage to regroup. “I’m really proud of the team’s effort today. There were a few things that went wrong early on. Joelle had some gear problems so our order we had been practising all week was switched up but we coped well,” Moolman-Pasio said. “Through the first time split we were fastest when we went through there and we were faster than Twenty 16. Then hearing Rabo Liv were also slower than us was a boost, we knew we were in with a shot for the medals. We died a thousand deaths out there today. We lost two riders a bit earlier than we planned so we had to dig deep but like the girls always do, we gave it our all. We rode with big heart today, we suffered and left everything out on the road. We couldn’t be prouder to finish with a bronze medal at our first TTT world championships.” Team Manager, Thomas Campana says the team aims to be one of the best in the world in the discipline so this is an encouraging sign for the future. “If you come to your first world championships with the new Cervélo Bigla team, you come here to learn,” Campana said. “The learning curve is very steep for us. We had a good race in the Sweden TTT, it was a surprise to finish second there and we had to reconfirm that performance. If we look into times, we’re around one minute behind last year’s world champions and 1 minute 57 behind the new world champions with a very young and talented team. I think we can close that gap within the next 24 months and that’s our goal, to be one of the best TTT teams in the world.” Campana went on to thank the athletes, staff and team partners. “The girls sacrificed a lot in the last three weeks. We’ve been on the road, racing and training together, eating together, it was a big family and I have to thank the staff and all the sponsors, especially Fritz Bösch (Bigla) who made it possible and gave us extra budget to fly over here early and make this medal happen." |
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