UEC European Championships: France storm to elite mixed relay TTT victory

The French dominated the Elite Mixed Team Relay at the UEC European Road Championships in Slovenia on Tuesday, taking a third title in the event.

Riding the 44km course in 1:00:29, they obliterated the World Champion Italian team, beating them by a whopping 1:12. The battle for third place was much closer, with the Luxembourg team taking the bronze medal, 27 seconds faster than the Polish team in fourth place.

Despite losing one of their number early in the first leg, the French men’s squad of Bruno Amirail, Remi Cavagna and Thibault Guernalec led from start to finish, setting the fastest time at each of the time checks and handing over to the women in a clear first place.

Anchored by Juliette Berthet, Cédrine Kerbaol and Maeva Squiban, the French continued to fly, putting more time into the Italian team and even catching the Polish team, who started four minutes ahead of them.

For their part, the Italian squad of Mattia Cattaneo, Marco Frigo, Matteo Sobrero, Elisa Longo Borghini, Monica Trinca Colonel and Alessia Vigilia held on for the first lap, but when Trinca Colonel was dropped early on lap two, they lost time quickly.

“It’s really cool. I think there is kind of a prophecy,” Cédrine Kerbaol said. “We did three times second in Worlds and now it’s the third time we get the title at Europeans, so we are really happy. For sure, it was not won in advance, the Italians are really, really strong, and the last days have been a bit hard with recovery from the Worlds.”

Cavagna offered the slightest insight into the French excellence in the discipline, saying, “We train a lot for this, it’s really important for France because we love this, we always race here for win. We always work together to be strong and to be the strongest, and today we were the strongest.”

More to follow…

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