Germany delivers Tony Martin a final rainbow jersey in mixed relay TTT
Germany delivers Tony Martin a final rainbow jersey in mixed relay TTT
Germany sent Tony Martin into retirement with one final World Championship victory, this time in the team time trial mixed relay on Wednesday. The whole team of Lisa Brennauer, Mieke Kröger, Lisa Klein, Max Walscheid, Nikias Arndt, and Martin put in impressive performances to take the victory against the Netherlands and Italy.
The latter half of the race was stacked with the fast nations, as each new team that finished set a new benchmark time. The USA was the first to really challenge for the top spot but was quickly surpassed by Great Britain. The Brits didn’t get too comfortable in the hot seat, however, after Switzerland finished 17 seconds faster.
Switzerland spent the longest amount of time in the hot seat, with many of the big nations still to come including the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and Italy.
The German men, looking to deliver Tony Martin one final career victory, set the fastest time before their women took off. Through the mid-race time check the German women were just over 21 seconds faster than Switzerland. At the finish, the Germans took the hotseat by 37.79 seconds over Switzerland.
Neither the Danes nor the Belgians could better Switzerland’s time, but the Dutch with a particularly strong women’s contingent of the newly crowned world ITT world champion Ellen van Dijk, Annemiek van Vleuten, and Riejanne Markus, presented a danger.
With only Italy and the Netherlands to finish Germany was secured a podium at the end of the day. Italy finished second-best only until Van Dijk and Van Vleuten crossed the line. The two secured the Netherlands a second place, but could not beat Germany. After so long at the top, Switzerland missed out on the podium by less than one second.