Defending champion Filippo Ganna of Italy on Sunday shattered home fans’ hopes of a 1-2 for their riders and retained the men’s time trial title to secure back-to-back gold medals at the Road World Championships.
On the opening day of the week-long event in Belgium, Ganna won with a small margin of just over 5 seconds to beat Wout van Aert for the second year running. Remco Evenepoel, another Belgian rider, claimed the bronze medal, 43.34 seconds behind Ganna.
The flat course taking competitors through the cycling-mad Flanders region did not feature any technical difficulty and was perfectly suited to Ganna, a pure specialist of the race against the clock.
Photo: EPA-EFE
As the defending champion, Ganna was the last down the starting ramp. The Italian rider was behind Van Aert at both intermediate checks on the 43.3km course between the seaside resort of Knokke-Heist and the picturesque city of Brugge, but produced a perfectly paced effort throughout to prevail.
Ganna won in 47 minutes, 47.83 seconds at an impressive average speed of 54kph.
“I think in one week, my condition [improved] really well. After the short camp at altitude, I did the European Championships, but the legs didn’t spin very well,” said Ganna, who finished runner-up behind Stefan Kung in the European Championships time trial earlier this month.
“I didn’t know if I could arrive at the World Championships with good sensations and good shape, but today when I woke up, I had a good feeling in my legs and in my head I just dreamed to win again today,” he said.
Olympic champion Primoz Roglic sat out the time trial, while Tokyo silver medalist Tom Dumoulin was absent due to a wrist injury.
Nottingham Forest FC are to go into the Europa League play-off round after a 4-0 win over Ferencvaros TC on Thursday, while Celtic FC secured their place in the knockout phase with a victory over FC Utrecht. Aston Villa FC finished second in the league phase after recovering from two goals down to beat FC Red Bull Salzburg 3-2 with their spot in the last 16 already assured. Forest stood an outside chance of climbing into the top eight going into the final round of matches, but needed to beat Robbie Keane’s Ferencvaros and rely on other results going their way. Sean Dyche’s
HEATED RIVALRY: The pair had met 14 times previously, with Sabalenka winning eight of the encounters and entering the final as the favorite to take the title Elena Rybakina took revenge over world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka to win a nail-biting Australian Open final yesterday and clinch her second Grand Slam title. The big-serving Kazakh fifth seed held her nerve to pull through 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne in 2 hours, 18 minutes. It was payback after the Belarusian Sabalenka won the 2023 final between two of the hardest hitters in women’s tennis. The ice-cool Rybakina, 26, who was born in Moscow, adds her Melbourne triumph to her Wimbledon win in 2022. It was more disappointment in a major final for Sabalenka, who won the US Open
Denver superstar Nikola Jokic returned from a 16-game injury absence to post a 31-point, 12-rebound double-double on Friday and propel the Nuggets to a 122-109 NBA victory over the Los Angeles Clippers. Three-time NBA Most Valuable Player Jokic had not played since suffering a bone bruise in the left knee he hyperextended in a game against Miami on Dec. 29 last year. The Serbian big man did not miss a beat. He led all scorers, connecting on eight of 11 shots from the field, and also handed out five assists with three steals while playing just 24 minutes, 32 seconds as the
BATTERED AND BRUISED: Alcaraz suffered a cramp in the third set, but was allowed treatment despite Zverev’s protests, and continued on to win in five-and-a-half hours An ailing Carlos Alcaraz battled past Alexander Zverev yesterday in five epic sets to reach his first Australian Open final and move within a match of becoming the youngest man to complete a career Grand Slam. The world No. 1 outlasted the German third seed 6-4, 7-6 (7/5), 6-7 (3/7), 6-7 (4/7), 7-5 over a titanic 5 hours, 27 minutes in hot conditions to head to tomorrow’s title match. He only narrowly avoided crashing out after a huge fright at 4-4 in the third set when he pulled up in pain with what appeared to be cramp. He was allowed to have treatment
RSS