Belgian team Omega Pharma-Quick-Step won the team time trial title at the world cycling road race championships on Sunday, becoming the first winners of the new event.
The team, led by German individual time trial champion Tony Martin, saw off US rivals BMC by 3 seconds over the 53.2km course.
Helping Martin to victory were Frenchman Sylvain Chavanel, Slovakia’s Peter Velits, Belgian pair Tom Boonen and Kristof Vandewalle, and Dutchman Niki Terpstra.
Photo: AFP
Third place went to Australian outfit Orica GreenEdge — silver medalists in the women’s race earlier — who finished 47 seconds off the pace.
“I put this victory near my biggest, along with the Classics and the road world championship,” Boonen said.
“I didn’t expect to win a race like this, first of all because it never existed before and in the past it wasn’t our discipline. We worked a lot and now we are there. It’s a team victory, even for the staff. It’s really a change of mentality going on,” he said.
Photo: EPA
Martin believes the win was the perfect tonic ahead of the individual time trial tomorrow.
“We fought together as a team,” Martin said. “We maintained a good pace. The team work was once again the key to the success. This victory gives me a lot of morale for Wednesday’s race.”
German team Specialized won the inaugural women’s team time trial.
The victorious team, led by 2008 world time trial champion Amber Neben of the US, completed the 34.2km course between Sittard/Geelen and Valkenburg in a time of 46 minutes, 31 seconds.
Specialized finished 24 seconds ahead of Orica GreenEdge, who boasted the top two finishers in last year’s individual time trial in the form of Germany’s Judith Arndt and Linda Villumsen of New Zealand.
Apart from Neben, 37, Specialized’s lineup also featured another American, Evelyn Stevens, Dutchwoman Ellen Van Dijk and German trio Charlotte Becker, Trixi Worrack and Ina-Yoko Teutenberg.
TOUR OF BRITAIN
AFP, LONDON
British cyclist Jonathan Tiernan-Locke became the first home rider in 19 years to win the Tour of Britain on Sunday.
The 27-year-old started the final stage 18 seconds ahead of Austrian Nathan Haas and 23 seconds in front of Italian Damiano Caruso, and Tiernan-Locke secured victory after finishing in the peloton behind compatriot and world champion Mark Cavendish, who took his third stage win in Guildford, south of London.
British duo Peter Williams and Kristian House won the sprint and king of the mountains jerseys respectively.
“It’s fantastic,” Tiernan-Locke told the BBC. “It has not really sunk in yet. It was a tough day, a lot tougher than we thought. So I feel relief more than anything.”
Cavendish, roared on by thousands of fans, added: “It was my last day in the [world champion’s] rainbow jersey and I wanted to finish it off in style.”
“It was absolutely incredible. The amount of people out on the road has been like the Olympic Games,” he said.
“I thought I’d been forgotten about and everyone was about sideburns now,” he added, in a reference to Team Sky colleague Bradley Wiggins, the Tour de France and Olympic champion.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
RSS