Denmark’s gold medallist Jakob Egholm celebrates on the podium at the end of the men’s juniors road race event of the UCI Road World Championships 2016 in Doha yesterday.
DOHA: Denmark’s Jakob Egholm won the junior men’s rainbow jersey at the UCI Road World Championships in Doha, after a late attack with fellow Dane Julius Johansen yesterday.
The men’s junior Road Race ended in a spectacular fashion as the 18-year old finished first in 2:58.19. Seven seconds behind the champion, German Niklas Markl and Swiss Reto Muller took silver and bronze in the sprint of an eighteen-men group of first chasers.
“I can’t believe it”, Egholm said. “I haven’t won a race since May. I went into the race with the expectation to help my team mates in the sprint. When we were in the breakaway I sat still in the back of the group to save energy. Then, when I took my turn, team mate Julius Johansen went and I got a gap too and went after him. He did not have the power in his legs, so I went for it. It was an individual time trial towards the end.”
Egholm is only the second Dane in history to win the juniors Road Race. Fifteen years before Egholm was born, his compatriot Sören Lilholt won the title in 1983. Niklas Markl took the second German Road Race silver after Pascal Ackermann grabbed a medal of the same colour in the Men’s Under 23 race.
Germany has now won seven medals in Doha - Team Time Trials results included - and are currently on top of the leaderboard. Reto Muller took the first Swiss individual medal at the UCI Road World Championships Doha 2016.
In the women’s event, Elisa Balsamo sealed an Italian gold medal with a perfectly led-out sprint. Skylar Schneider from the USA and Norway’s Susanne Andersen grabbed silver and bronze after 74.5 kilometres on the 15.2 kilometre Pearl circuit finishing in 1:53:04, the same as 51 more riders.
“Unbelievable”, said Balsamo after crossing the line.
Schneider was not able to capitalise on her teammates’ hard work to keep the peloton together in the final lap. She was well placed in Balsamo’s wheel, but did not have the speed to surpass her opponent on the line. Andersen tried to jump from Schneider’s wheel but she too lacked the pure speed of Balsamo, who held the others of with grace.
Fate struck only three kilometres into the race. At the only slightly bending wide road in the first loop of The Pearl circuit, more than half of the bunch came to a standstill in a major crash, with shattered bikes, flying water bottles and riders screaming all over the place.
Twenty-odd women managed to escape the chaos, but for all others pre-race plans were thrown into the bin. They had to remount and try to catch up with the front group as soon as possible.
