The German women’s team around former time trial world champion Lisa Brennauer and the experienced Trixi Worrack made a disappointing appearance in the World Championship road race.Instead of a positive surprise, the Dutch champion Chantal Blaak’s victory in Bergen was nothing but disillusionment.
A weak 42.Brennauer was the best placed starter of the German Cycling Federation after 152.8 demanding kilometres with a gap of 1:19 minutes.
The BDR women’s results in the Norwegian championships were thus worse than ever before in the 2000s.In the longest race in the history of women’s World Cup history so far, they were only passengers and were unable to set decisive accents.The favourite Dutch women, on the other hand, are tactically exploiting their strengths to the full.Behind soloist Blaak silver and bronze went to Katrin Garfoot (Australia/0:28 minutes back) and defending champion Amalie Dideriksen (Denmark).
Junior Niklas Märkl had barely missed the second medal for BDR.The 18-year-old from the Palatinate had to settle for fourth place in the success of the Danish Julius Johansen.Lennard Kämna clinched the only podium position for the German federation so far with silver in the U23 road race, and the pros’ prospects on Sunday are not good either.
The atmospheric atmosphere along the course was already a foretaste of the climax at the end of the title bouts, which should turn into a cycling festival day:”It will be pure goose bumps like the Tour de France or even better,”believes Jasha Sütterlin from Freiburg.
The Slovakian double world champion Peter Sagan starts as the favourite and could be the first driver to become world champion for the third time in a row.The German team around time trial specialist Tony Martin hopes for a top-ten position after the absence of John Degenkolb due to illness.