Austrian Bernhard Kohl had hoped to shine at the world championships in his homeland, but "unfortunately it didn't go according to plan. I had to leave the race, totally exhausted, after seven laps," he said on his website, www.bernhardkohl.de. The Austrian team didn't have a rider in the main escape group. "We waited a long time and discussed whether we should lead the peloton to go after them. When they got a 14 minute advantage, we had to. The advantage would have been too large otherwise. Together with Paco Wrolich I went to the front. The Swiss helped us, but we had to do most of the work. I rode at full speed for a long time, until I just couldn't any more," he says. "I fell back and saw that I couldn't even keep up with the field any more. My strength was at an end, and I dropped out.
"Despite everything, we can be satisfied with our performance, even without a medal. We cut down the advantage to four minutes and did the ground work that allowed the peloton to eventually catch them," he noted. "That gave our sprinters the chance for a podium spot. It's too bad that it didn't work out that way, but the others were simply too strong."
