The Australian national anthem rang out across Zũrich on Wednesday afternoon as Grace Brown won another time trial world title, this time along with Brodie Chapman, Ruby Roseman-Gannon, Michael Matthews, Jay Vine and Ben O’Connor in the Mixed Relay team time trial at the UCI Road World Championships.
The sextet in green and gold were all given rainbow jerseys and gold medals after beating Germany by just 0.85 of a second and Italy by 8.25 seconds.
Brown sang the Australia national anthem for the second time in four days. It was the final Road World Championships time trial of her career, with Saturday’s road race her final outing in national colours before retirement.
The trio of men set the fastest time of 33:44 for their 26.85km lap on the course that will be used for the World Championship road races. The Australian women lost Roseman-Gannon earlier than hoped after going into the red early on the climb but Brown and Chapman paced their ride and shared their effort to snatch the title from Germany, who started just before them.
O’Connor, Matthews and Vine finished together but went deep. They were an usual but talented trio, with O’Connor using his Vuelta a España podium form, Vine recovering from his crash in Sunday’s individual time trial and Matthews testing his form for Sunday’s road race with a strong but rare ride on a time trial bike.
“We’ve all won Grand Tour stages and wore Grand Tour leaders jerseys and it was sweet to have a chop with Jay and Michael,” O’Connor explained.
“We laid it down when we needed to and rode smart when we needed to. It was fun out there.”
Matthews was not sure about it being fun.
“I didn’t prepare for a time trial, I think I’ve only ridden my TT bike two or three times since the Tour de France, so it hurt,” he explained. “I wanted to see the road race course at full speed and full lactate. I think that will be an advantage for Sunday.
“I’ve won this event when it was a trade team race but we didn’t get a rainbow jersey. To get a rainbow jersey with my national teammates is massive for us.
“We did really well in the men’s ride and then the women brought it home. It couldn’t have gone much better.”
Vine raced with a plaster over the stitches in his forehead after his crash on Sunday and was rightly proud of his ride.
“Any gold medal at the World Championships is incredible. This rainbow jersey will be framed and put in my pool room,” he said.
Grace Brown was understandably emotional and proud to win again, and continue her incredibly successful ‘last dance’ and farewell after also winning gold medal in the Paris Olympic time trial.
“When the men came through and set the fastest time and we headed off, that set-it up perfectly. We wanted to finish it off,” she explained.
Brown and Chapman distanced Roseman-Gannon early on their lap but decided to push as a duo. Australia was five seconds faster at the intermediate time check and fought to hold on.
“It made me excited to head off and know that we weren’t fighting back from a deficit,” Brown explained. “We went too hard on the climb and put Ruby into the red but we knew we had to cut our losses and go down to two riders.
“We didn’t realise it was that close but our DS was pushing us via the radio, so we knew it was close. We went all-in for the last kilometre to get that extra second. We ended empty but it was enough to win.”
