ORICA-GreenEDGE narrowly missed the top step of the podium and a world title in Florence, Italy in the team time trial at the Road World Championships. The Australian outfit settled for the silver medal, an improvement over the bronze they earned in 2012, after stopping the clock .81” slower then repeat team time trial world champions Omega Pharma-QuickStep. Sport Director Matt White was full of praise for his squad that included Brett Lancaster, Daryl Impey, Jens Mouris, Luke Durbridge, Michael Hepburn and Svein Tuft.
“I can’t complain about how things went today,” said White. “We can’t fault anyone. If we had gone nine-hundredths of a second faster, we would be world champions today.”
“To be so close to winning a world title over an hour effort is a little disappointing,” White admitted. “Sometimes it’s easier to swallow when it’s a bigger margin. We know what it’s like to win by such a small margin, too. We just edged out Quick-Step at the Tour. Today they turned the tables on us.”
Omega Pharma-Quick-Step defended their world title in a time of 1:04:16.81 over the flat, fast 56.8km course. The Belgian squad posted the fastest time at the first two intermediate sprints. They were second quickest at the third intermediate time check where ORICA-GreenEDGE set the benchmark just under 2” quicker than the world champions. The Australian outfit sacrificed Jens Mouris and Michael Hepburn to gain the upper-hand.
“We started a little bit slower than expected,” said White. “We were 13” behind Quick-Step at the first time check. The guys didn’t panic, and they gradually began to peg them back until it was very, very close at the end.”’
“Omega Pharma-Quick-Step was the team to beat today,” White added. “We knew our strength was depth in numbers. We came here to win, and we followed the plan we developed to achieve that goal. The boys stuck to the plan. They left their egos at home and did what they needed to do. I can’t ask for anything more than that.”
The silver medal ride represents a step forward for the Australian outfit. The team rounded out the podium last year in the team time trial.
“We’ve been improving each time we’ve done this discipline,” said White. “When you look at the effort over one hour, every team is going to find something they can do better. There is a lot of variability over an effort this long, so there always a lot of little things that we can do better. No team can do everything perfectly in that amount of time. We certainly see small areas for improvement that we can work on to go even better next year.”