Coppi e Bartali TTT – Win for Israel Start-Up Nation

Israel Start-Up Nation with time trial star Alex Dowsett win the Team Time Trial stage of the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali – Dowsett 2nd on GC as Cavendish leads

Coppi e Bartali TTT – Win for Israel Start-Up Nation

Seven guys working together as one. Those seven Israel Start-Up Nation riders covered the 10.8 kilometers around Gatteo in 11:36. One second faster than the second-placed team Astana, two seconds faster than the third-placed team Decuninck Quickstep with Mark Cavendish.

Their average speed was 55.862 km/h, and they rode the last two kilometres in two minutes flat – yes, at 60 km/h after giving their all for the previous 12km. In his last turn at the front, TT star and former hour record holder Matthias Brändle was even pushing 70km/h.

But what else can you expect from a time trial team led by Alex Dowsett and Matthias Brändle, former World Hour Record champions? It wasn’t enough to give ISN the leader’s jersey, but they are still in great position with Alex in second place, Ben Hermans in third, and actually have all the places from two to nine!

“For me personally I love the team time trial and there’s not many of them nowadays,” Alex Dowsett said. “Today was pretty special. We worked really hard in the last weeks building up to this, with the whole team, the directors, formulating a plan, a strategy, working with our strengths and minimizing our weaknesses and the whole team rode fantastically together, we didn’t lose anyone along the way.”