Major medals to Italy, Russia on Day 2 of the UCI world championships

The under 19 women and men featured on the second day of action at the UCI Road World Championships with the individual time trial.

(L-R) Shirin Van Anrooij of The Netherlands, Aigul Gareeva of Russia and Elynor Backstedt of United Kingdom. Source: Getty

The women rolled down the start ramp first with France’s Lea Curinier setting the first reference time of 22min 51sec over the 13.7km course in Harrogate, Yorkshire.

The Netherlands’ Leonie Bos and Sweden’s Wilma Olausson were next in the hot seat before another Dutch rider, Shirin van Anrooij, set a new benchmark of 22min 19sec.

Van Anrooij sat on the hot seat waiting for the arrival of Aigul Gareeva of Russia, Sofia Collinelli of Italy and home favourite Elynor Backstedt.

Despite an earlier slip, Gareeva was motoring but her efforts almost ended in disaster as the 18-year-old Russian took a wrong turn just before the finish costing her valuable seconds.

She recovered and her effort was rewarded with the fastest time, beating van Anrooij by 3.61 seconds.

With Gareeva and van Anrooij assured of podium positions it was left for Backstedt to finish, bumping Camilla Alessio of Italy out of the bronze medal position.

The men’s route covered 27.6km and they too flirted with disaster when eventual men’s winner Antonio Tiberi of Italy broke a chain in the first corner and was forced to switch bikes.

The 18-year-old was unflappable as he went on to set the winning time of 38min 28sec – almost eight seconds ahead of his closest rival the Netherlands’ Enzo Leijnse and another 12 in front of Germany’s Marco Brennerd.

Early on in proceedings two British riders, Leo Hayter and Oscar Julien-Nilsson had given the home crowd something to cheer about, with Julien-Nilsson spending a little time in the hot seat before Leijnse took his spot at the top of the leaderboard and eventual silver.

Germany’s Marco Brenner put in a strong performance to take third.

The best-placed Australian was 16-year-old Patrick Eddy who edged into the top-20 just a shade over two minutes behind the winner.