Switzerland’s Marlen Reusser overcame illness this year to win the women’s individual time trial at the Cycling Road World Championships in Kigali on Sunday, while Remco Evenepoel of Belgium won a third successive men’s individual time trial title.
Reusser finished 51.89sec quicker than the rest of the field for a dominant victory, taking the rainbow jersey in a time of 43min 09.34sec around the 31.2km course in Rwanda’s capital on the opening day of the week-long championships, being hosted in Africa for the first time.
Anna van der Breggen from the Netherlands took silver for a fifth time in 44.01.23, with bronze going to her compatriot Demi Vollering in 44.14.07.
Reusser, one day after her 34th birthday, upgraded to the gold that had previously eluded her after finishing second in the time trial at the 2020 and 2021 world championships, and taking bronze in 2022.
More recently she had suffered misfortune, abandoning mid-race in 2023, citing burnout at the end of the season, while last year a crash and Covid-19 infection forced her to miss the championships in her home country.
This year, she fell sick during the Giro d’Italia Women and was forced to abandon the opening stage of the Tour de France Femmes in July, but showed no ill-effects as she blitzed over the course, which included a cobbled section near the finish.
Reusser had been the pre-race favourite and quickly set out her stall after Van der Breggen had taken the early initiative in hot conditions and at 1,567m altitude.
The Swiss had faster splits after the first checkpoint (10km) and the second (19km) than Van der Breggen. Vollering, the last rider out, was initially not far behind the Swiss rider’s time but when she passed the second intermediate point, she had lost half a minute to Reusser.
“It was brutal,” said Reusser. “I went really hard on the climbs, maybe too hard in the beginning, but it was the right way to pace it. I still can’t believe it, I think I’ve been on the podium so many times without winning, so this is very special.”
Van der Breggen, who was world champion in 2020, finished runner-up for a fifth time, after silvers in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Vollering was silver medallist in Zurich last year and the last rider out, nudging Brodie Chapman of Australia into fourth spot on 44:30.21. The 2019 and 2023 world champion, Chloé Dygert from the US, was ninth in 45:34.77.
In the men’s event, Evenepoel left the field trailing in his wake, easily seeing off the challenge of Tadej Pogacar. In a much-anticipated clash, the 25-year-old Belgian made light work of dealing with the Tour de France winner, passing him on the course as he covered the 40.6km in 49:46.03.
The Slovenian Pogacar, celebrating his 27th birthday, had set out to do the time trial and road race double but finished fourth. The Australian Jeremy Vine came second in 51:00.83 with Belgium’s Ilan de Wilder in third.
It was a statement victory for Evenepoel with his dramatic overtaking of Pogacar two kilometres from the end on the cobbles of Cote de Kimihurura, a 1.3km climb, which made for a difficult finish.
He already had a 45-second advantage over Pogacar at the first time check after 10.6km and by the third time, after 31.6km, had stretched his advantage to almost 90 seconds as Pogacar’s ambitions faded.
Evenepoel said: “The first climb was quite hard, together with the last two, but I really pushed it there and after that saw I had quite a big gap, so I just wanted to keep a pace that I could hold until I went flat out on the last climb. But I’m going to say the cobbles were really … I hated them at some point. It was so hard to really push through them at the end, but to win is the most important.”
Vine built on his performance at the Vuelta a Espana, which finished last week and where he won two stages, and was stronger over the second part of the course in Kigali.
Van Wilder’s bronze medal achievement was heightened by the fact he was making a debut in the time trial at the world championships. Pogacar now has a week to prepare for his bid for road race success on Sunday, when the championships are concluded.
