Arens unable to follow up world junior title with European victory: thrilling battle against the clock won by Spain's Ostiz

Fifty-one riders took part in the European time trial championships for juniors early on Wednesday morning. At 9:30 a.m., it was up to Ukraine's Maryna Tsybulska to kick things off. With a time of 20 minutes and 43 seconds, she was the first rider to cross the finish line. Tsybulska thus recorded an average speed of 35.3 kilometers per hour over the 12.2 kilometers.

Shortly afterwards, Germany's Leis set off and recorded the first real target time with a time of 18 minutes and 40 seconds. It took quite a while for another rider to come close to Leis' time. In the end, it was the Dutch rider Roos Müller, who finished fourth at the World Championships in Rwanda, fourteen seconds slower than the German.

Slowly but surely, we saw the top favorites for the European title roll off the starting podium, with Arens, as the brand-new world champion, going last. With Paula Ostiz as the second-to-last and Oda Aune Gissinger as the third-to-last, the entire podium from Rwanda set off one after the other, in the same order as they stood on the podium at the World Championships.

We would have one intermediate point in the junior women's race, with 1.5 kilometers to go. That's where the final climb of about 1.1 kilometers at an average gradient of 5.2% began. It would also be the only difficulty on an otherwise flat course, so we had to wait for the intermediate times before the start of the final climb.

With Leis still in the hot seat, we had to wait for the top favorites. At the intermediate point, Gissinger was already fifteen seconds behind Leis, Ostiz was even four seconds more than that, and Arens would ultimately have to concede just under half a minute to the German. This made Leis look set for an impressive victory.

The question was, of course, how much time the favorites could make up on the climb. Quite a bit, because it was Ostiz who suddenly knocked Leis off the hot seat with a margin of only two seconds. Gissinger didn't make it and finished third, while Arens crossed the finish line last. The world champion could only manage fourth place, ahead of Müller, who finished fifth. Ostiz retained her European junior title, which she had won for the first time the previous year in Belgium.