Four years after he took the Junior men’s double world championship in Innsbruck, Austria, 13 days after he won the 77th Vuelta a España and a week after he earned bronze in the Worlds time trial, Remco Evenepoel took his first elite road title at Wollongong 2022 in New South Wales, Australia on Sunday. Solo for the last 25 km, Remco is the seventh youngest elite men’s world champion and the youngest since Lance Armstrong in 1993. Canadian Pier-André Coté was in the day’s breakaway.
The Course
Like the elite and U23 women, the elite men started north of Wollongong in Helensburg and after 27.5 km entered a 34-km loop with the mighty Mount Keira, an 8-km long climb that looms over Wollongong. Then there were eleven laps of the 17-km city circuit, each containing the 1.1-km, 8.6 percent Mount Pleasant climb. The total was 266.9 km. It was a lovely day.
#Wollongong2022 ME
🚩 Helensburgh
🏁 Wollongong
🚴🏻♂️ 267.5 Km
Weather: 🌧 15°C, light rain
Route: https://t.co/pIht5VEjDy pic.twitter.com/8v7PNzZeiA— La Flamme Rouge (@laflammerouge16) September 24, 2022
The Canadian contingent was Derek Gee, Matteo Dal-Cin, Nickolas Zukowsky and national champion Pier-André Coté.
Matteo Dal-Cin was in the first move as soon as the flag dropped.
Coté joined the second breakaway. A massive natural break allowed Coté’s 12-rider gang to pull out more time.
Thirty-two kilometres into the race, before Mount Keira, Mathieu van der Poel, who had a very unsettled night, abandoned the race.
France started to up the pace on Mount Keira, deflating the Coté break’s lead. A select group of 50 including Wout Van Aert, Tadej Pogačar, Romain Bardet and Jai Hindley destroyed the peloton. By the bottom of Keira’s descent, the Coté bunch’s gap was 3:30. With the breach between Van Aert-Pogačar and Julian Alaphillipe and Evenepoel’s mob at 2:00, Germany started to work in Group 3.
The Wollongong circuits began, 200 kilometres still on the horizon. Ben O’Connor led a quintet that flared away from the Van Aert-Pogačar group. Lap 2 saw Germany’s work pay off as Alaphilippe and Evenepoel reunited with Van Aert and Pogačar. O’Connor’s move and Coté’s escape were still ahead. By the start of Lap 3 the fugitives were 7:00 up the road….
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Canadian Cycling Magazine…