Six years after taking his first title, Artem Ovechkin (Rusvelo) has returned to the top of the Russian time trialling hierarchy. In the Russian championhips, he beat Sergey Nikolaev (Itera-Katusha) by 22 seconds while Pavel Brutt (Tinkoff-Saxo) was 3 seconds further adrift in third.

One week ago Ovechkin confirmed his good condition by taking his first big TT win in Europe in the Tour de Slovenie time trial. After the race, he made it clear that his big goal was his national championships and with today's win he achieved his big goal.

Ovechkin covered the 56km course in Saransk in a time of 1.12.00 and that was enough to take over the title from Anton Vorobyev. Surprisingly, the best Katusha rider was Vladimir Isaychev in fourth.

Katusha will try to get their revenge in Sunday's road race where Alexander Porsev is the defending champion.