Swiss time trial specialist says Worlds time trial course harder than road race circuit
Fabian Cancellara will be the favorite for the World Championships time trial on Thursday in Geelong, Australia. The Swiss rider aims to take his fourth World Championships title in the race against the clock on the 45.6km course. Cancellara was hesitant to even make the trek to Australia, but now hopes for double victory, with the road race taking place on Sunday.
Cancellara did his last workout on Tuesday, in temperatures of only 12 degrees centigrade (around 50 Fahrenheit). Neither that nor the police having a watchful eye on the cyclists to obey the traffic rules is stopping Cancellara. “My big motivation is to write history,” he tells Swiss magazine Blick.
He and Michael Rogers are competing for the title of the first man to have won four time trial World Championships. Cancellara’s three are from 2006, 2007 and 2009. Rogers was reigning before that (2003, 2004, 2005).
Cancellara says the course is one of the hardest in recent years. “The [time trial] course is harder than the road race circuit on Sunday. It is never really flat. You have to always put power onto the pedals.”
Cancellara would also love to finally get the historic time trial/road race double. He was already close last year (finishing fifth in the road race after winning the time trial). He did even better at the 2008 Olympics, when he also won the time trial. He was then only beaten by Samuel Sánchez in the road race, getting the silver medal in Beijing.
His amazing spring week in April this year, when he won both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix in dominating fashion, certainly gives hope that Cancellara has a double victory in reach. Sometimes strength is not enough, though, and one has to avoid accidents as well. Something that Cancellara says the UCI made a little more difficult by banning the race radios for the event.
“If something is happening up front, if there is a crash, I want to be informed. It serves my safety,” he says. But the UCI is eager to have the riders fight it out on the road for themselves.
“That’s nonsense,” Cancellara says. “We live in a modern world, so the race radio ban is a step backwards.” He also doesn’t think that reducing the influence of the directeurs sportives will make much of a difference tactically. “I don’t need a coach who tells me when to breathe or how to pedal when.”
Cancellara showed that despite his late decision to give the historic time trial/ road race double another shot, he is on great form. In the warm-up race on Saturday, he finished fourth, behind winner Filippo Pozzato. Cancellara made the crucial four-man cut and despite some jet-lag, proved that he has to be reckoned with on both Thursday and Sunday.