Ganna wins Étoile de Bessèges final stage, Wellens wins overall: Daily News

Hello again, CyclingTips readers,

The news is jam-packed with road racing action between the men’s and women’s road nationals in Australia and the final stage of Étoile de Bessèges.

Plus, some bad news from the Specialized headquarters in the UK.

Read on for the latest news from the world of cycling.

Abby Mickey
Associate Editor

What’s news?

Ganna wins Étoile de Bessèges final stage, Wellens holds on to overall

The world time trial champion Filippo Ganna was victorious on the fifth and final stage of Étoile de Bessèges. Ganna won the final day by only 10 seconds, not enough time to take the general classification lead from Tim Wellens who finished fourth on the day, 29 seconds down.

Ganna also won stage four of Étoile de Bessèges after a solo breakaway in the final 10 km.

Benjamin Thomas finished second in the final stage ITT with Ganna’s teammate, Ethan Hayter finishing third.

The 10.7 km individual time trial featured a flat out and back and finished at the Sanctuaire Notre-Dame des Mines after a 2.5 km ascent with 5.9% gradient.

Wellens won the general classification by 53 seconds over his closest rival, Michal Kwiatkowski. Nils Politt rounded out the overall podium 59 seconds down from Wellens.

Sarah Roy is the 2021 Australian road national champion

Sarah Roy will wear the green and gold of the Australian national champion in 2021 after a 30 km long solo breakaway. Roy had been part of an earlier move alongside her teammate Grace Brown, who took silver, and Lauretta Hanson, who was third on the day.

“I just didn’t expect this today,” Roy said. “I didn’t come here to do this. It wasn’t my plan. I had no consideration of this whatsoever,” she added, laughing. “But I think that’s what makes it more exciting and makes you more emotional.”

Read the full report here.

Cameron Meyer wins Australian road national title

Cameron Meyer took the sprint victory from a group of seven riders at the Australian road national championships after an aggressive day of racing. With a flurry of attacks in the leadup to the finish, a sprint looked unlikely, but Meyer assisted by Luke Durbridge was able to put himself in the perfect position to sprint for the green and gold jersey.

Kelland O’Brien was second while Scott Bowden took third.

The full report and video highlights can be found here.

Fire at the UK Specialized headquarters

The Specialized UK headquarters in Chessington has been devastated by a fire that occurred in the evening on Saturday. No humans were injured in the fire and the cause is still under investigation.

It took 12 fire trucks and 80 firefights to gain control of the blaze that raged for four hours. A source on the scene told Cycling Weekly “from what I saw the place is gutted.” Kirsty Woodcock, the head of marketing for Specialized UK said, “there will be some short-term changes to certain business operations, but our warehouse is located elsewhere and riders should not be concerned.”

The damaged warehouse was home to offices, a workshop, some demo bikes, and a showroom.

If cycling doesn’t work out, Tom Pidock could have a future running track

According to Tom Pidcock’s Instagram, he ran 5 km in 13:25. That would put him 14th in the 5k at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. The men’s world record in the 5k is currently 12:35.26, held by Joshua Cheptegei, who hails from Uganda and is the 2019 world champion in the 10,000 m.

Pidcock said he would be validating the results in a few days, so, for now, this story remains ongoing.

In case you missed it…

JRA with the Angry Asian: Unexpected ammo in the battle for cyclist justice

James Huang chats with Megan Hottman of Hottman Law Office about the Auto Club Group’s recent press release detailing the differences between a car “crash” and a car “accident”.

Peter Sagan has COVID-19

News of the former world champions positive COVID-19 result was released over the weekend.

Is Campagnolo going wireless?

Here’s what a bunch of patent filings are telling us.

Curve GXR Kevin of Steel review: We need to talk about Kevin

Iain Treloar reviews Curve’s steel do-anything gravel bike as part of the 2021 Field Test.