After three days of individual time trials, the team time trial mixed relay was the sole event on day four of the 2022 UCI Road World Championships in Wollongong, Australia. This hard-fought format, appreciated by the riders and spectators, saw victory go to the Swiss sextet, and drama befall the Dutch team.
This was only the third edition of the team time trial mixed relay. For the inaugural edition in 2019, the Netherlands took honours. The team relay was cancelled at 2020’s Covid-hit UCI Worlds before Germany won on its return in 2021.
Fifteen teams lined up in Wollongong, without the United States of America, who withdrew after Magnus Sheffield’s crash in the individual time trial. The tag of pre-race favourites fell on a trio of teams – Italy, Australia and the Netherlands. The race format would see three men start things off over the 14.1km Wollongong course before passing to the women for lap two. One man and one woman could afford to be dropped.
The team from Tahiti kicked things off, setting a time of 40:50.22. They celebrated in the hot seat, soaking up the adulation from the Antipodean crowd, but knew their lead would be short-lived. And so it proved as the Australian team (Luke Durbridge, Michael Matthews, Lucas Plapp, Georgia Baker, Alexandra Manly and Sarah Roy) delivered a strong all-round performance for a leading time of 34:25.57.
Next up came Switzerland in the form of Stefan Küng, Stefan Bissegger and Mauro Schmid. Küng and Bissegger had already demonstrated their form on day one of the UCI World Championships, finishing second and fifth, respectively, in the individual time trial. They continued in the same vein on Wednesday, passing the baton to the women (Elise Chabbey, Nicole Koller and Marlen Reusser) with a lead of 15s over the Danish men. The women matched their male counterparts with a brilliant time to send the Swiss team to the top of the leaderboard in 33:47.17.
On paper, Italy looked set to challenge, with the men consisting of Edoardo Affini, Matteo Sobrero and Filippo Ganna. Sobrero, winner of a stage of this year’s Giro d’Italia, was dropped near the end and the men would finish 10.7secs down on the Swiss men. The women would have to dig deep but Elena Cecchini soon fell back, leaving Elisa Longo Borghini and UCI individual time trial Women Under 23 UCI World Champion Vittoria Guazzini with much to do. They dug deep to finish under 3secs behind in 33:50.09.
Would they all be able to hold off the Dutch team, that featured a powerful men’s trio of Mathieu Van der Poel, Daan Hoole and Bauke Mollema, and an even stronger women’s trio of Annemiek van Vleuten, Ellen van Dijk and Riejanne Markus? They would, as disaster after disaster descended on the Dutch. First, Mollema endured a mechanical. Then, with the men over 40secs down passing to the women, Van Vleuten hit the tarmac soon after rolling down the ramp. Her right knee was cut and swollen and she looked in shock. The Dutch team’s dreams of gold disappeared.
It meant that the Swiss team took gold with Italy silver and Australia bronze. “The tactic was to go out hard,” said Bissegger after the race, “and thankfully we had the moto king [pointing to Küng], who we could draft behind. He was really strong today.” As for the women. “Our strategy was to go out really hard, too,” laughed Reusser. “But only hard enough so that we could all survive. It worked out very well.”