“It’s difficult to take any positives out of today” – Mark Cavendish disappointed after Worlds

The 2016 UCI World Road Race Championships concluded yesterday with the Elite Men’s 257km road race. Defending champion, Peter Sagan (Slovakia) was able to retain his crown and sprinted to victory just ahead of Mark Cavendish (Great Britain) and Tom Boonen (Belgium) placed 3rd.

As expected, the soaring temperatures and typical Qatari crosswinds would play a huge role in today’s race and the race defining moment came with 175 kilometres still to go. After a 80-kilometre trip up the Arabian Gulf, the main bunch turned back towards Doha and Great Britain and Belgium chose this exact moment to put the race into the gutter. Minutes later and the crosswinds had blown the race to pieces.

Amongst those to make it into the 29 rider front split were Cavendish, Edvald Boassen Hagen, Elia Viviani and Alexander Kristoff. The nation with the upper hand though was Belgium, as they had 6 riders in front.

The big losers were Germany as not one of their 3 favourites was able to make the selection. Belgium were relentless in driving the pace and this saw a 6-minute gap to the early break squashed in just 30 kilometres.

The 2nd group was also around 28 riders strong and Germany were leading the chase there, but they could not match the Belgian pace setting up ahead.

Coming into Doha and entering the 15-kilometre finishing circuit which would be completed 7 times, it was just the 2 reduced groups that remained in contention and they were separated by 1 minute.

Italy started to assist Belgium up front and this pretty much meant it was game over for group 2, the gap started growing and there was no more cohesion in the chase. The World Champion was going to come from the front group.

When the bell lap was reached, just 21 riders remained after a few of the workhorses from the other nations had dropped. It was a stellar group of riders still left though with the likes of Elia Viviani and Giacomo Nizzolo representing Italy, Michael Matthews there for Australia, Alexander Kristoff also there for Norway and Belgium having Van Avermaet and Boonen in contention too.

Holland was the team to make the next move though as Niki Terpstra put in an attack which Boasson Hagen covered, and then Tom Leezer countered his Dutch teammate with 5 kilometres to go. Norway and Belgium gave chase but it was only just inside of 1km to go when it all came back together.

The sprint finale was a bit messy and Cavendish initially had the wheel of Sagan. Sagan then went right to start his sprint and Cavendish left, unfortunately all the traffic was on the left and our Manxman had to pause his sprint briefly to avoid colliding with Matthews.

Sagan was able to gain some ground in this moment and even though Cavendish was coming back up to the Slovakian, there was just not enough road left. Sagan crossed the line first with Cavendish 2nd and Boonen 3rd.

Mark Cavendish: “I am little disappointed, tactically I made a mistake. I wanted to be on the wheel of Sagan and ultimately I was, but then all of a sudden the road was blocked. I was trying to find a way through and at around 100 meters I had to stop pedaling to go around Matthews.”

“I got back onto Tom Boonen but it was too late, I couldn’t get back onto Sagan. I feel I lost gold rather than I won silver today. We did all we could, it was tough losing Luke Rowe to a puncture because then we would have had 3 in front which would have been valuable in the final, but that’s how it is. It’s difficult to take any positives out of today.”