Boels Dolmans celebrate third Vargarda TTT success
Boels Dolmans fought through the rain to win the PostNord Vårgårda West Sweden team time trial on Saturday, posting a time of 53:07 minutes for the 42.5 kilometre course, just 28 seconds slower than their victory in the sun in 2017.
Road world champion Chantal Blaak was part of the winning team and explained how trust between the riders was one of the keys to victory.
“It was wet for sure. But everyone had the same conditions and had to deal with the wet circumstances. To be honest, I prefer the rain instead of the wind from Friday, because there we were almost blown off the road," she said.
"It is always hard to ride a team time trial in the rain because you cannot see much, so it is important that you trust each other. The key in a TTT is to keep it smooth all the way, it was hard from the beginning to the end, but we never lost our rhythm. We also did the climb and the corners in the end pretty well.”
Leah Kirchmann was part of the Team Sunweb squad that finished 16 seconds slower than Boels Dolmans. She also did not mind the rain so much.
“We did not win, but we are happy with how we executed our race,” the Canadian said. “The conditions were pretty epic, you could not really see a lot, it was raining so hard. Personally, I was kind of happy to finally not be so hot after this heat wave in Europe. So the rain was a little bit welcome, but you definitely had to be more careful in the corners.”
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