A nail-bitingly tight three-way battle in the Road World Championships mixed relay team time trial on Wednesday saw Australia claim the victory by less than a second over Germany, with Italy clinching bronze, just eight seconds further behind.
When the three top nations’ riders entered the final quarter of an extremely long, remorselessly rugged course running across the hills around Zurich, they were still only separated by a scant five seconds in Australia’s favour.
A last-ditch effort by Grace Brown, already a winner of the World’s individual time trial last Saturday and teammate Brodie Chapman then just managed to keep Australia atop of the results table by the finish by the tiniest of margins.
Bronze medallists in 2023, Germany had the consolation of going one better in 2024 with silver, while Italy fell off the pace slightly in the final kilometre to finish eight seconds down and complete the podium – Â but still well ahead of fourth-placed France, 23 seconds back, in one of the most dramatic TTs in recent Worlds history.
“I’m feeling a bit greedy, I need a few more rainbow jerseys in my closet,” Brown joked afterwards as she added a second World Championships title to the one she took last weekend, “but this one’s really got a nice vibe, to do it with the whole Aussie crew. It’s really exciting.”
Brown’s teammate Michael Matthews added, “It was a hard one. I think Jay [Vine] put me to the sword on that first climb, I think we averaged about 650 Watts from bottom to top, so it was a hard day and there was not much recovery.
“So we had to stick together as much as possible and keep our speed as high as possible. We came through with the fastest time [at the first checkpoint] and then we knew we had a really strong women’s team to finish it off.”