The victories of Austria’s Laura Stigger and Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel in the 2018 UCI Road World Championships Innsbruck-Tirol will be remembered for years as these two Juniors create exceptional stories at the very beginning of their careers.

Austria’s Laura Stigger delighted the local crowd in Innsbruck-Tirol as she claimed the Road Race world title for Junior Women in her native town less than three weeks after taking the Rainbow Jersey for Cross Country mountain biking, which has been her speciality so far. Stigger attacked uphill and outsprinted her three breakaway companions with France’s Marie Le Net and Canada’s Simone Boilard crossing the line in second and third places respectively.

Remco Evenepoel proved once again to be on another planet to the rest of the field of Juniors. The Belgian claimed the Road title just three days after he won the Individual Time Trial, again with a significant margin. A crash left him two minutes behind but he made it back and rode away solo after he dropped his last opponent, Germany’s Marius Mayrhofer, with 15km to go. Italian Alessandro Fancellu rounded out the podium as he outsprinted Alexandre Balmer of Switzerland for third place.

WOMEN JUNIOR ROAD RACE PODIUM

1 – Laura Stigger - 70.8km in 1h56’26”, average speed 36.484km/h

2 – Marie Le Net s.t.

3 – Simone Boilard s.t.

MEN JUNIOR ROAD RACE PODIUM

1 – Remco Evenepoel - 131.8km in 3h03’49”, average speed 43.021km/h

2 – Marius Mayrhofer at 1’25”

3 – Alessandro Fancellu at 1’38”

WOMEN’S QUOTES

In the press conference, the winner Laura Stigger said: “My plan was to have fun riding in my hometown. I live only 15 kilometres away from here. This win was unexpected. It’s incredible. I thought I’d give my best but that’s all. Before the sprint, I had in the back of my brain that number 4 means no medal, but I got the gold medal and it’s crazy. My focus was on mountain biking all year. After I won the world title [in Switzerland], I got some input from Tommy [Rohregger, former Austrian WorldTour cyclist] to prepare for the Road Race. I have ridden the course but not that often. The last climb was my favorite. I don’t know yet what my future will be. Next week I’ll go to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the Youth Olympics, then I’ll decide which way I’ll go in my cycling career. My big goal will be Tokyo 2020 but it’s too early to figure out which race I’ll go for.”

MEN’S QUOTES

The winner, Remco Evenepoel said: “I guess everyone saw the crash. It was a stupid crash because the road was straight. The Junior peloton is more nervous than the one of the pros. Even in the neutral zone, there was a crash! I never panicked although it took me more than two minutes to get a wheel change. The German rider [Marius Mayrhofer] told me: ‘I’m not gonna ride with you’, and then he asked me to take him to the line and he’d let me win but I’m not stupid. I wanted to finish alone anyway and with the same celebration for my last race of the season as on the first one, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, that I won after a 60km long solo breakaway. The feeling of doing it at the World Championship is so much better. I’m very happy.”

Marius Mayrhofer, second, said: “In the last big climb, I saw guys behind me, so I knew I had to go fast again in order to get a medal. I trained a lot in the mountains for the last few weeks. I was prepared for this course. Between the first and the second climbs, I realized he [Remco Evenepoel] was stronger than me today and generally, so when it came to last climb I went at my own pace and he went at his pace, and that was good.”

Alessandro Fancellu, third, said: “We tried to attack Remco from the start but when he came back to the front [after his crash], it wasn’t possible to stay with him. In the future, I don’t know, I hope it’ll be possible to beat him but today it was impossible. I don’t know him much but he’s very well respected in the bunch. I’m happy with the medal. I’ve been close to fight for silver instead of bronze but when the Swiss guy [Alexander Balmer] started to attack me, our agreement to ride together till the top of the climb was no longer valid so the cooperation between us was not good anymore.”