Cycling Road World Championships: Germany snatch Mixed TTT gold from Australia as Grace Brown’s farewell gets sweeter

Grace Brown’s incredible fairytale end to her storied career continued as she helped Australia to win the Mixed Team Time Trial in Zurich on Wednesday afternoon.

Coming into the race all eyes were on the Swiss as the hosts were bidding to win the event for a third successive year.

However it quickly became clear that they wouldn’t have the pace and eyes started to turn to Germany, who looked like they would be the ones to win.

But the Australians, led by Brown, pulled out two superb rides to take the win ahead of Germany, with Italy rounding off the podium.

After 53.7km of racing and 984m metres of climbing, Australia and Germany were separated by under a second, wiht Australia’s winning time being 1:12’52″28 to Germany’s 1:12’53″13. Italy’s third place was only eight seconds behind at 1:13’00″53.

The victory continues an incredible Worlds for Brown, who will retire after the event, having already won the Individual Time Trial earlier.

With her ITT victory, Brown became the first rider to ever win ITT Olympic and World gold in the same year, before Remco Evenepoel became the second person, and first man to achieve the feat shortly after on the same day.

After winning the mixed team time trial, the Olympic gold medalist said: “I think I’m feeling a little bit greedy, I need a few more rainbow jerseys in my closet but this one is really nice, a great vibe to do it with the whole Aussie crew. Really exciting.”

Australia took the fastest time on the men’s circuit, overtaking Germany who had taken the lead two minutes earlier, to send their women’s team down the ramp in search of the rainbow jersey.

Unlike the final standings, Italy took second after the men’s portion of the relay by 7.5 seconds, which moved Germany down into third.

Australia’s men, with a team made up of Michael Matthews, Ben O’Connor, and Jay Vine were third at the intermediate time point by five seconds, but moved themselves into first at the finish with an impressive ride.

Their women’s team, powered by Brown and Brodie Chapman were first when they reached the intermediate time point, going into remainder of the race with a two-second gap to Italy.

Such was the pace of the top three women’s teams they all crossed the intermediate point with two riders, with Ruby Roseman-Gannon (Australia), Franziska Koch (Germany), and Soraya Paladin (Italy) all dropped and only five seconds separating them.

20 countries were competing for the title on the 26.85km course, completed once by the men and once by the women, split into two waves of ten teams out on the road.

Ukraine were the fastest team after the first wave and sat in the hot seat with a time of 1:19’52″05, almost four minutes on China who they moved into second.

Ukraine remained in the lead until the first of the teams in the second wave, Canada, overtook them with a time of 1:15’34″32.

Canada remained at the top of the standings for a short while before they were overtaken by Denmark with a time of 1:14’58″80.

The Danish team of Mikkel Bjerg, Mikkel Frølich Honoré, Magnus Cort, Emma Norsgaard, Rebecca Koerner, and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig would eventually finish fifth.

France, silver medalists last year finished fourth with their team of Bruno Armirail, Thibault Guernalec, Benjamin Thomas, Audrey Cordon-Ragot, Cédrine Kerbaol, and Juliette Labous setting a time of 1.13.16,11.

It was neck and neck between the eventual podium teams with Germany, who were in third after Marco Brenner, Miguel Heidemann, and Maximilian Schachmann completed the course moving up into second after a strong ride from their remaining women’s riders Liane Lippert and Antonia Niedermaier clawed back some time and moved into the hot seat, only to be displaced by Australia shortly after.

Italy, whose men’s team featured Edoardo Affini, Mattia Cattaneo, and Filippo Ganna took third after an exhilarating ride from Elisa Longo Borghini and Gaia Realini saw the podium go down to the wire.

Switzerland, who had won back-to-back titles in the past two years, struggled without key names including Marlen Reusser and Stefan Küng and eventually finished eighth.

Australia’s Matthews said winning the title: It [the course] was a hard one. I think Jay [Vine] had put me to the sword straight away on that first climb and I think we averaged about 650w from bottom to top so it was hard day. There wasn’t much recovery out there so we really had to try and stick together as a team as much as possible and just keep our speed as high as possible.

“I think we [the men] came through with the fastest time so we were quite confident from there and we knew we had a really good, strong women’s team to finish it off. I’ve won it when it was trade teams, the team time trials, this was the first time we’ve had this experience to win it now.

“We came in confident let’s say, but you never know until we all crossed the finish line. To win it here now, I think we’re still in a bit of shock at the moment but once it sinks in that we’re world champions in the team time trial we can really enjoy it much more.