Rasmus Quaade Christian wins silver as Mads Wurtz Schmidt wins gold at Road World Championships
Denmark’s hopes for their home tour were shattered as their two main riders Matti Breschel and Alex Rasmussen could not make it through to the World Championships. Rasmus Christian won the silver medal at the Under-23 time trial and gave the home crowd a
lot to cheer after they missed their two key cyclists.
Rasmus mentioned that he has been asked by reporters before the time trials but he didn’t reply as his concentration was solely on winning the event. On winning the silver medal at the Championships he mentioned that, “There were so many different journalists
asking me about the time trial yesterday and today I wasn't talking at all because I wanted to focus on the race. The crowds were fantastic, and I've never seen anything like this. I could barely hear what the coach was yelling at me from the team car behind."
Danish coach Morten Bennekou mentioned that starting the event with a silver medal is a good motivation for the rest of the team. He further added that Quaade has been practicing the whole year and has shown his best performance as he told cycling news,
“All year he’s been focused on his time trial, today was very strong and most importantly, very consistent.”
Denmark will have to rely on Lars Bak, Jakob Fuglsang, Michael Morkov, Nicki Sorensen and Anders Lund for the Men’s road race. However, with Matti Breschel not included in the Danish squad the pursuit for a medal can be a little hard. Rasmus finished the
race 36 seconds behind the race leader Luke Durbridge of Australia while Michael Hepburn finished the race 46 seconds behind Durbridge. Rasmus was not the only Danish player to have made his way through the medals as Mads Wurtz Schmidt won the gold medal in
the Junior time trials event.
Mads took 35 minutes and 17 seconds as he finished the 27.8 kilometre race in first position with James Oram of New Zealand 4 seconds behind at second position and David Edwards of Australia finishing third with 21 seconds behind Wurtz Schmidt. It will be
interesting to see how the Danish team approaches the Championship as they have already secured two medals at their home event.
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