Arnaud Demare beats Adrien Petit to take U23 road race at UCI World Championship 2011
The French cyclist Arnaud Demare put in a tremendous performance in the Men’s under-23 road race at the UCI World Championship 2011 on Friday, September 23. The race started and ended in Rudersdal.
Demare out-sprinted his team-mate Adrien Petit in the final kilometres and covered the distance of 168 kilometres in 3 hours, 52 minutes and 16 seconds. Andrew Fenn (Great Britain) was in third spot with the same timing as the French cyclist.
After winning the stage, Demare said, "The false flat to the line was very hard, but I saw with 100 metres to go that I was going to win. Then when I saw that we were going to get the one-two, well, that was an extra satisfaction."
In the end of the first lap, Carlos Alexandre Manarelli launched the first attack and gained a sizeable advantage while Gianluca Leonardi (Italy) put in an impressive solo effort and built a lead. Both of them worked well together and gained a huge advantage.
The first crack in the peloton held after four laps to go, as the two riders were caught by the peloton and the group of six cyclists pushed clear including, Christopher Juul Jensen (Denmark), Natnael Berhane (Eritrea), Philip Lindau (Sweden), Maxat Ayazbayev
(Kazakhstan), Louis Meintjes (South Africa) and Eugenio Alafaci (Italy).
All of them worked hard and after 4 kilometres to go, a crash took place and disrupted the field slightly. However, the Frenchman showed a good effort, launched an attack and built a gap as he crossed the finish line ahead of the other cyclists.
He further added, "It was a perfect race; Adrien led me perfectly. We started with 250 metres left and I moved in front 100 metres from the line. Seeing he was second made it even better."
Jacob Rathe (USA) tried his best to take a lead but failed and grabbed the 87th spot with a difference of 20 seconds. The Junior Men road race will start in Rudersdal as all the cyclists will cover the distance of 126 kilometres.
Tags: