Medvedev wins European marathon title

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Alexey Medvedev (Elettroveneta-Corratec) and Pia Sundstedt won the European marathon championships in Kleinzell, Austria, on Sunday. The men raced 100km while the women race 80km.

The Russian Medvedev won the race with a time of 4:01:45 after outsprinting Jukka Vastaranta (Milka Trek), who finished second, just four seconds later. Tim Bohme (Team Bulls) was a bit further back in third.

He leveraged his recent fitness from the AlpenTour Trophy and held off rivals.

"They tried to kill me in every way," said Medvedev. "We were a bunch of 10 riders until 30km from the finish. The most active in a combative way were Bohme and (Hannes) Genze (Merida), but I anticipated the attack on the hard hill of Pisling with 10km to go."

Current marathon world champion Alban Lakata (Topeak Ergon) was eighth after having a rough day. He was absent from the lead group during the first half of the race after a mechanical problem. He was not able to pull back enough time to make the podium and finished at 1:20.

"Naturally I had set out to achieve a better result today. I am happy with my form, but still, with Trans Germany still very recently in my legs, I just couldn't do it today," said Lakata, somewhat disappointed in the finish zone.

Pia Sundstedt won the women's race in a time of 4:04:11. Sally Bigham (Topeak Ergon) was second 8:47 back while Elena Giacomuzzi finished third at 16:54.

Bigham was happy with his silver medal. "It was a rush to the first bit of singletrack. On the climb at the first feed zone, I was able to pull away from Pia. By the third feed zone, I had to let her move ahead. I was able to build my gap over third place all the same though." She described the result at the highlight of her career so far.

Full Results