The team time trial mixed relay, the final time trial event of the 2024 UCI Road and Para-cycling Road World Championships, was dominated by Australia’s Michael Matthews, Ben O’Connor, Jay Vine, Grace Brown, Brodie Chapman and Ruby Roseman-Gannon on Wednesday. With a time of 1h12’52’’ to cover 53.7km around Zurich (Switzerland), they powered to the gold medal in the most thrilling fashion.
Marco Brenner, Miguel Heidemann, Maximilian Schachmann, Franziska Koch, Liane Lippert and Antonia Niedermaier took silver for Germany with a gap of 0.85 seconds. Italy completed the podium with Edoardo Affini, Mattia Cattaneo, Filippo Ganna, Elisa Longo Borghini, Soraya Paladin and Gaia Realini (+8’’).
Just +0.85s in it 🤯
— UCI (@UCI_cycling) September 25, 2024
A tense end to the Mixed Team Relay, with Australia crowned the new UCI World Champions 🌈 #Zurich2024 pic.twitter.com/o18JXYgmMn
Each national team took on two laps (one for the three men, then one for the three women) on the 26.9km city circuit that will see the peloton battle for the rainbow jersey in the road races from Thursday until Sunday.
The Germans took the strongest start, but the Australians led the way after the first loop. Italians got in the mix and all three teams were within 5’’ after 38km… Brown and her teammates eventually sealed the deal with the closest margin, delivering a new UCI world title for Sunday’s women’s individual time trial (ITT) winner just before retiring.
“I think I’m feeling a little bit greedy, I need a few more rainbow jerseys in my closet,” Grace Brown said with a smile. She is the first rider to win both the ITT and the team time trial mixed relay in the same edition of the UCI Road Worlds. “This one is really nice, doing it with the whole Aussie crew,” she added.
“It was a hard one,” Michael Matthews said. “Jay [Vine] put me to the sword straight away: on that first climb, I think we averaged 650 watts from bottom to the top… There wasn’t much recovery so we just tried to stay together as much as possible as a team. We came through with the fastest time and then we knew we had a strong women’s team to finish it off.”