The team time trial for the UCI World Championship takes place on Sunday, 22 September and Team MTN-Qhubeka has announced its line-up for the event earlier today. The team has been training in Lucca, Italy, and has selected the final six riders to start the event. Forming part of the line-up is current Lithuanian National Time Trial champion, Ignatas Konovalovas.

Konovalovas is also a former time trial winner in the Giro d’Italia and speaking ahead of the event, he said, “The team is feeling very good and I think we have improved a lot this past week with the specific training we’ve done. We’ve been talking to each other a lot to understand each other perfectly. Everyone is at a good level now. The team time trial is interesting because it doesn’t mean a good time trialist is necessarily the best for a team time trial. It’s finding the best guys who fit into the puzzle. We would like to finish in the top fifteen, that would be a great result for us and we’d be very proud but it’s the world championships so let’s see how it goes.”

South African road champion Jay Thomson, who was runner up in his national time trial championships earlier this year, is also part of the squad along with Bradley Potgieter, Johann van Zyl, Kristian Sbaragli and Martin Wesemann.

“We’ve selected a team that we believe can do very well,” Director of Health and Performance, Dr. Carol Austin said. “We’ve been hit by injuries lately but the depth in the team has been incredible and the athletes have shown a hunger to be part of the event. We’ve done extensive training in Lucca and also on the Mugello Circuit, which was a critical day for us. We’re very happy with what we’ve achieved the past few weeks and are happy to present our athletes to the world stage.”

The team time trial discipline was added to the championships last year by the UCI. The race is 57 kilometres long starting in Monetecatini Terme and finishing in Firenze Mandela Forum.

UCI TTT World Championships (Italy) – (September 22 / UCI CM):

Bradley Potgieter (RSA), Jay Thomson (RSA), Johann van Zyl (RSA), Ignatas Konovalovas (LTU) Kristian Sbaragli (ITA) and Martin Wesemann (RSA).