Tom Dumoulin: It's the team event of the year, and we pulled it off
Sep 18 2017 01:51 am CET
Photo of Team Sunweb
Team Sunweb put an end to the BMC/Quick-Step Floors reign in the World Championships Team Time Trials by taking the Gold medal in Bergen, Norway.
The team formed by Tom Dumoulin, Lennard Kämna, Wilco Keldermann, Soren Kragh Andersen, Michael Matthews and Sam Oomen, completed the circuit eight seconds faster than its closest rivals, BMC Racing Team.
"It's crazy, first the women this afternoon and then us," said Dumoulin at the end of the competition. "The team was so homogeneous, it was absolutely amazing. Normally you'd say that I was the best time trialist on paper but with this team it was so smooth, and we had a really good pace and kept it all the way to the line.
"We tried to keep it together especially on the long climb with around 10km to go which just worked out. We were all flying - I don't have the words. It's really unexpected but very nice. We knew that we were doing a good time trial but didn't know the time splits until the finish. It was so close and so tense with BMC, but we made it at the end. It's the team event of the year, and we pulled it off."
Coach Adriaan Helmantel commented about the extraordinary day the team had with the added victory of the women's team at the same discipline. "What can I say - this is unreal and so amazing. Of course after the victory of the women it was already amazing, so we took that spirit and also some information into the men's race. Yesterday, we chose to keep the meeting short as everything was clear - the guys just had to do it together. They really did it in an amazing way.
"From the beginning it was really smooth and the level was really homogeneous, and I think we made a difference to the other teams here. We stayed actually until the last kilometre with six, where most others were riding with four. That was a part of our strategy as we knew that we could win a lot of time after the climb and that was also the main reason for the selection of the team. We knew that we needed strong TT riders but also strong climbers as there you could make a difference."
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