Astana Team was also a part of the teams riding the World Championships in TTT today in Spain. The team came in just outside the top 10 finishing 12th out of 29 teams. It means that the team was 2 minutes and 13 seconds behind the winning team BMC Racing.

Daniil Fominykh, the current national champion of Kazakhstan, described the route as being harder than last year and going up and down as well.

“The course was considerably more difficult than last year, and I think we were all surprised by the speed and the climbing – after the first 15km it was up, down, up, down almost completely to the finish,“ Fominykh told the Astana website.

Fominykh competed for the Astana team together with Alexey Lutsenko, Andrei Grivko, Tanel Kanger, Jacopo Guarnieri and Lieuwe Westra.

Cloudy weather, light rain and a shifting wind caused little disturbance for teams that started early, and Fominykh said that the wide streets of Ponferrada were a welcome sight as his 2014 season comes to its final week of competition.