Antonio Puppio finishes 22nd in the U23 time trial of the Yorkshire World Championship: “It has been quite an experience”

2019 World Cycling Championships
Ripon-Harrogate (30.3 km ITT)

The Italian Antonio Puppio signed the twenty-second position in the time trial of the U23 category, held this Tuesday between Ripon and Harrogate over a distance of 30.3 kilometers. The cyclist of the Kometa Cycling Team finished 2:25 behind the winner, the Danish Mikkel Berg, who won his third consecutive title in the speciality. Ian Garrison and Brandon McNulty, both Americans, completed the podium with silver and bronze respectively.

Puppio, third in the past Italian championships of the modality, was the best of the two runners of his country in a test marked by the adverse weather and the appearance of several rafts of water in the route that caused falls. The incident of the Danish Johan Price-Pejtersen, one of the aspirants to medal, or the Hungarian Attila Valter were two of those falls.

The Italian rider of the continental team of the Alberto Contador Foundation was lucky and was able to avoid the fall. “Fortune was on my side. There was a lot of water on the road and there were a lot of falls. It has been a very hard day, one of those true cycling, almost heroic cycling. Without a doubt, quite an experience,” he says.

After his world championship presence and his time of 42:45, Puppio now faces a well-deserved vacation after a first year in the continental category in which he has accumulated 50 days of competition. He has achieved a third place in the prologue of the Giro del Valle de Aosta, a fourth place in the first stage of the Vuelta a Aragón and a sixth place in the prologue of the Vuelta a Hungría. “I want to spend them at home, at the end I spend a lot of time outside”. In a few weeks, the work will return to start a new campaign in the ranks of the Kometa Cycling Team.

(automatic translation, sorry for mistakes)