Thursday, Oct. 9, 2003



 By Kris Westwood

 

 Scotland's David Millar lived up to the pre-race hype by dominating the elite men's time trial today, winning by the commanding margin of one minute, 25.09 seconds over runner-up Michael Rogers of Australia. Germany's Uwe Peschel finished third, just 56/100ths of a second behind Rogers.

 "I was so scared this year of not winning - It's something I've wanted for so long. This proves my worth in time trials," said the 26-year-old Scottish time trial specialist after winning his first world championship title.

 "This is the biggest one, obviously," he said of his long list of victories. "All the other ones were a prologue to this."

 Millar posted the fastest splits throughout the race: at the halfway point of the 41.3-kilometre race he was 37 seconds faster than Peschel and 38 seconds up on Rogers, who lost 30 seconds changing his wheel after a flat tire.

 While Millar throttled back for the second lap, Rogers started to push hard after coach Neil Stephens told him he was in contention for the win.

 In the end, he beat Peschel by a hair's breadth.

 "I shocked myself, I wasn't expecting second," said the 23-year-old Australian, who has been progressing steadily through the professional ranks over the last few years and rode his first Tour de France this summer.

 As for Peschel, he was simply delighted to finish in the top three.

 "I'm happy about the medal," he said. "If somebody said to me in the morning that I would have the medal, I would have said they were crazy."

 Of the other pre-race favourites, Michael Rich, who won silver a year ago, finished fourth, just 10 seconds behind Peschel, and Italian Dario Frigo was sixth.

 Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano, who was also tipped as a strong finisher after his third place in the Tour of Spain, abandoned with four kilometres to go suffering from stomach pains.

 Top Canadian was national champion Eric Wohberg, who finished 25th in 54:46.88, a creditable performance for a rider with a cast on his left wrist, a legacy of a crash this summer.

 "I've had to miss a lot of big races over the last half of the summer, but I've been doing the best that I can and when you have an injury, you just deal with it," he said. "I was suffering in a couple spots but in general I was happy with my effort."

 Spectators were out in force yesterday, creating an electric atmosphere around the circuit.

 "It was just fantastic - there's people cheering all around the course," said Wohlberg "It doesn't matter what nationality the rider is, people are cheering just as loud for everyone here at the start line. It was great to see that Canadian spirit today."

 The second Canadian entrant, Jean-Francois Laroche of Magog, Que., was 39th.

 Laroche, 23, only found out he was selected to the team a week ago, when Roland Green withdrew because of illness, so he had little time to prepare. In fact, he had already stopped training for the season and started a new job at a law firm a week ago.

 "I lost all my time on the climbs," he said. "On the flat sections I was OK, but on the hills I had difficulty."