Today, the road race World Championships were held in Ponferrada, Spain where 14 laps on a slightly undulating circuit of 18.4 kilometers were to be covered in steady rain. Ultimately, Tinkoff-Saxo Dane, Matti Breschel finished fourth after an amazingly aggressive effort from the Tinkoff-Saxo Danes with Chris Juul-Jensen and Michael Valgren in the leading roles.

A long list of Tinkoff-Saxo riders were on the start list for today’s World Championships and they surely made their mark on the race panned out. An early break went away from the gun and worked up a lead of almost 15 minutes before a few countries started reeling them back in. As the peloton eventually slimmed down, new breakaway attempts were launched when the field was within 2 minutes of the front riders. With 60 kilometers to go, Tinkoff-Saxo Dane, Christopher Juul-Jensen cannonballed up the road with 13 other riders. Apparently, the pace wasn’t fast enough for Tony Martin (Germany) who decided to go on alone.

The situation forced Australia and France to take charge of the pacemaking in the field. Meanwhile, Martin was swept up by the chasers but as they didn’t seem to agree on the workload, they were all reeled in by the peloton with 30 kilometers remaining.

Then, Tinkoff-Saxo Dane, Michael Valgren initiated a tenacious attack and leapt up the road with Alessandro De Marchi (Italy) and Cyril Gautier (France) but the Danish national champion was doing far most of the work on the front. Entering the final lap, Vasil Kiryienka (Belarus) bridged the gap to the front trio while Spain finally took over the reigns of the pack. Unfortunately for Valgren, the front group was joined and passed by Michael Kwiatkowski (Poland) 6 kilometers from the finish line.

The powerful Polish rider maintained the lead all the way to the finish line and took gold. Behind the former break was caught and Tinkoff-Saxo’s Matti Breschel opened his sprint a bit early to take silver but he was passed right on the finish line by Simon Gerrans (Australia) and Alejandro Valverde (Spain) and thereby finished fourth.

A frustrating result on the finish line but Breschel was content when we talked to him shortly after the race:

“Crossing the finish line being so close to the podium is obviously frustrating but in retrospect, I think we delivered a very impressive performance. Before the race, I wasn’t too happy about the rain and feared for the descent but as the race progressed I came to terms with the road surface and I felt as relaxed as humanly possible. Actually, it was a fairly typical World Championship and this kind of race suits me perfectly,” Breschel told the Tinkoff website.

“Both Christopher Juul-Jensen and especially Michael Valgren were working immensely hard out there and I really hoped that Michael had been able to stay with Kwiatkowski but he had already been on his limits for a while at that point. In the sprint, I just opened up full gas but they managed to pass me on the final meters. However, I’m happy with the result and our combined effort on the team,” concludes Breschel.