Home > News

Watch: New ITT world champion makes wrong turn but still wins

Russian Aigul Gareeva was not the only rider to have bad luck in Yorkshire as the world's ITTs got underway

September 23, 2019
Share on SMS

The individual time trials at the 2019 UCI Road World Championships in Yorkshire got underway on Monday with the junior women and men. The 14 km course in Harrogate is quite undulating and will be used as the finishing circuit in the road races later this week. There’s a lot that can go amiss in time trials from mechanicals to crashes. Women’s junior winner, Aigul Gareeva had to overcome a different obstacle. The Russian took a wrong turn on the course but still managed to eke out the win.

Gareeva was in the zone pushing hard at this point of the race. On a right-hand turn, the marshall was poorly placed at an intersection where the metal barrier at the side of the road was open. By the time Gareeva noticed the marshall, it was too late to make the turn. She had to turn around and get back up to speed, a considerable effort in an only 22-minute effort. That didn’t stop her from winning 4 sec ahead of Dutch rider Shirin van Anrooij and Elynor Bäckstedt of Great Britain.

It wasn’t the only mishap for a talent junior time trialist on Monday. Italian Antonio Tiberi suffered a mechanical right off the starting gate and had to make a bike change before even the first corner of the race.

The bike change wasn’t particularly speedy with the crew probably caught off guard with it coming in the opening moments of the race. Despite the considerable slowdown, Tiberi still managed to set the fastest time as of his finish though there were still riders to start. On the 28 km course, he set a time of 38 min 28 sec.

Categories: News |