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Norwegian Tobias Foss surprises all the favorites and wins the World Cycling Time Trial

2022-09-18T22:01:54.509Z


In Australia, the Swiss Stefan Küng finished second and the winner of the Vuelta, Remco Evenepoel, third, in a test in which Ganna and Pogacar disappointed


Tobias Foss, during the time trial.DEAN LEWINS (EFE)

Stefan Küng flies and nothing stands in the way, aided by the breeze that ripples the waves on Wollongong beach on a sunny Sunday in late winter in Australia.

He flies and is not afraid of the fences that close the curves, he brushes past them and at his fast pace their metal bars sound like the happy notes of a marimba.

It's the day of the giant swiss.

He is convinced.

The minimal defeats are over, the scant one second that cost him the European title a month ago in Munich, the few tenths that left him without a medal at the Tokyo Games.

He has a devastating march.

He no longer feels like an intruder on the path of the great Swiss rollers, the one opened more than 70 years ago by Hugo Koblet, the charming well-groomed, the crazy Alex Zülle, the persevering Tony Rominger and his hour record,

that of Fabian Cancellara and his four world championships.

On the second ascent of Dumfries Avenue, an 8% slope in which times are taken, he has passed everyone.

He is doing better than the great favorites, the Italian Filippo Ganna, who is looking for his third consecutive title, and his body, a sculpture carved from a single block of marble by Michelangelo, almost, so perfect are his proportions and defined his muscles, he twists and falls apart going up the slope, which exhausts him and leaves him a rag;

It goes better than the compact rocket Remco Evenepoel, barely 1.70m tall, an aerodynamic bubble collected on his bicycle, and it is not the Remco that overwhelmed in the Vuelta, the future that dazzles, it lacks spark, one last change.

Tadej Pogacar does not count.

Pogacar smiles and jokes before leaving.

He is relaxed.

His race will be on Sunday.

And others who always embittered Küng, almost 29 years old, are not here.

Wout van Aert is not there, always second in the World Time Trials, who is saving for Sunday's line;

Rohan Dennis is not there, the best of the Australians, the world champion of 19, who has stayed in Germany for his brother's wedding.

10 kilometers left.

Downhill through wide avenues to the promenade, and many curves.

None of the greats come close.

No one can prevent his victory, he believes.

He is wrong.

Sitting on the hot seat, the place successively occupied by those who set the best times, sweats and throbs a young Norwegian, a 25-year-old lad who is almost a newcomer to the world of the older brothers of the time trials.

He has won the Tour del Porvenir three years ago.

He is one of those so-called rough diamonds that the people of the Jumbo carve meticulously, without haste, with patience, as they carved another Scandinavian, Jonas Vingegaard, who won the Tour.

His name is Tobias Foss and he is apparently no match for Küng.

At Dumfries Avenue he was down 12s to the Swiss.

Impossible that one at these levels can waste that advantage in 10 kilometers downhill.

Impossible?

It seems impossible to Foss, whose all-red face, like that of his fellow hurdler Karsten Warholm, and the same gleam of madness and disbelief in his eyes, changes expression as the kilometers pass and it seems that the hands of the stopwatch are speeding up. measures Küng, and realizes that he can win.

And when it is already unbelievable that he has won, and he does it big, for three seconds (40m 2s for 34.2 kilometers, exactly, at an average speed of 51.245 kilometers per hour), he still does not believe it, and violently slaps his cheeks with both hands.

"I wanted to wake up from what I thought was a dream," says the young Foss, who has pledged his future to become a Grand Tour rider and explains that in the very technical finish he took risks to trace all the curves to the millimeter.

“And I still don't believe this is real.

If I had finished in the top 10 I would be happy;

to make a place in the top five would have made me very happy… Winning… winning is unreal”.

In Australia, where 12 years ago Thor Hushovd became the first Norwegian world champion in line, Foss achieves the same primacy in the time trial.

Third, at 9s, Evenepoel finished.

Pogacar was sixth and Ganna seventh, who projects on October 8 to break the hour record, 55.548 kilometers, which was established in August by his engineer at Ineos, the British Dan Bigham.

The Spanish Oier Lazkano was 29th.

A couple of hours earlier, the Dutch favorite Ellen van Dijk, recent hour record holder (49.254 kilometres), won the women's event, held for the first time over the same distance, 34.2 kilometres, as the men's.

It is the third rainbow for Van Dijk, 35, who, with a time of 44m 29s (which would have earned him the 33rd out of 48 in the men's category), the compatriot of the all-around champion Annemiek van Vleuten (seventh), surpassed in 12s to the Australian Grace Brown and in 41s to the Swiss Marlen Reusser.

Sandra Alonso and Lourdes Oyarbide finished 31st and 32nd, respectively.

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Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2022-09-18

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