As it happened: Road World Championships elite women's time trial
Recap live updates as the elite women raced for the famous rainbow stripes over a 31.7km rolling course starting and finishing on the race track in Imola
The first event of the 2020 UCI World Championships in Imola is the women's elite individual time trial starting and finishing in Imola, on the famous race track.
The defending champion, Chloe Dygert (USA) will go off last at 15:55 CET and wear the number one on her back but has not ridden a race this year.
With no Annemiek van Vleuten (Netherlands) racing today after breaking her wrist at the Giro Rosa last week the weight of Dutch expectation is on two-time runner up, Anna van der Breggen and 2013 World ITT champion, Ellen van Dijk, who won her title the last time a World Championships was in Italy.
British hopes lie with riders Lizzy Banks and Alice Barnes set off at 14:50.30 and 15:41.00 CET.
The first half of the route is gradually uphill as they head south west, before dipping down just after the checkpoint at Borgo Tossignano where they start to head back north east.
With five kilometres to go, the road kicks up as they enter the race track of Imola via a Autodroma Ferrari where the road gets more technical.
The 31.7km route is very similar to the one raced in Plouay, France earlier this year at the European Championships which was won by Van der Breggen with Van Dijk in a close second and Swiss rider, Marles Reusser, taking the bronze.
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The course only takes in 200 metres of altitude gain but that doesn't mean it isn't hard. This is a proper power course that will leave the race wide open.
With Dygert not racing at all this year and Van Vleuten not riding means that Van der Breggen is the firm favourite off the back of her Dutch national road race title, her win at the European Championships time trial and her overall win at the Giro Rosa just a week ago.
Van der Breggen will be motivated too, as she has come second the last two year's in Innsbruck and Harrogate, Yorkshire.
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Hi, I'm one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter. Proud Yorkshireman from the UK's answer to Flanders, Calderdale, go check out the cobbled climbs!
I started watching cycling back in 2010, before all the hype around London 2012 and Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France. In fact, it was Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck's battle in the fog up the Tourmalet on stage 17 of the Tour de France.
It took me a few more years to get into the journalism side of things, but I had a good idea I wanted to get into cycling journalism by the end of year nine at school and started doing voluntary work soon after. This got me a chance to go to the London Six Days, Tour de Yorkshire and the Tour of Britain to name a few before eventually joining Eurosport's online team while I was at uni, where I studied journalism. Eurosport gave me the opportunity to work at the world championships in Harrogate back in the awful weather.
After various bar jobs, I managed to get my way into Cycling Weekly in late February of 2020 where I mostly write about racing and everything around that as it's what I specialise in but don't be surprised to see my name on other news stories.
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