Disappointed Reusser on second at Giro d'Italia Women time trial: ‘I just couldn’t really go deep’

Marlen Reusser came home second, albeit well behind Anna van der Breggen, in the tough climbing time trial at the Giro d’Italia Women. The Swiss rider from Movistar is the world champion in the discipline and had perhaps hoped to take time, but afterwards she was mainly full of praise for her former teammate.

Reusser was one of the first GC riders to start the 13-kilometre time trial. The Swiss specialist paced her climb excellently and sat in the hot seat for a long time. In the end, her time was good enough for second place, at a sizeable distance from Van der Breggen.

Asked whether she was happy with her great performance, she was clear. “Great performance by Anna, you mean?” she said with a laugh in the flash interview. During the time trial, however, Reusser already felt she was not going to win. “I already had doubts about my time trial, so I was already assuming I might have to leave the hot seat.”

“It just did not work today to really go deep. It actually went too well, which meant I rode the time trial far too easily. I do not know,” she explained. A poorer placing had already seemed likely to her, but the gaps were very large. “A minute faster, like Anna did now, is really a lot. Chapeau!”

Reusser rode, unlike Demi Vollering and Van der Breggen, on her road bike rather than her time trial bike. Even so, she does not want to blame that for her time loss. “When you are slower, you always think you made the wrong bike choice. In hindsight it is always easy to point at things that went wrong.”

“It is not as if I would have won on a time trial bike. Today I simply rode a good, but not a great, time trial,” she said honestly. The Swiss rider now sits a fine second in the standings and remains firmly in the fight for overall victory, although she will still have to close a sizeable gap. “I am hungrier now because of this time loss than I already was, but hungry enough,” she concluded defiantly.