Читать книгу My World онлайн

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He judged the last 90-degree right-hander perfectly, already sprinting flat out. Bettiol was spent. My slingshot cornering technique was negated by Kristoff’s speed, but behind me I could sense a gap opening to Matthews, Trentin, and the others. They’d expected the sprint to open after the corner, and Kristoff’s clever acceleration had caught everybody out. It was me and him now. I just had to get past this big Norwegian guy. I’d done it before. But he’d done me before, too.

Three hundred meters is a hell of a long way to ride flat out. If it had been Mark Cavendish leading, I would have been confident of winning if only I could hold his wheel through his initial explosive acceleration. If there had been 20 of us fighting for space, I might have fancied my ability to find a hole to push my nose through. But this was a big wide road with just the two of us going mano a mano for gold, and this guy was the fastest there was on a long, straight road.

I didn’t think it was possible for it to be any louder, but the volume went up again. It seemed the whole nation was screaming in Kristoff’s ears, blowing him over the line. After pushing myself to breaking point to hold his wheel in that opening 100 meters, I tried to use his slipstream to fire past. Oh Jesus, he was just too fast. My absolute final tank-emptying effort brought me up alongside him, but that barrel-of-a-gun bang that fires you around the last guy in a sprint just wasn’t happening. I was alongside him, but the slipstream effect was spent, and he still had his nose in front. With two meters to go, he must be world champion.