Jastrab shows her class in the Junior Women’s Road Race Championships

Megan Jastrab continued USA’s good form to hold onto a slender lead and take the Junior Women’s Road Race title, despite a last gasp effort from Belgium’s Julie De Wilde and the Netherlands’ Lieke Nooijen, who came second and third respectively.

The 86km race set off from Doncaster with Jastrab one of the clear favourites, alongside Britain’s Elynor Backstedt and European Champion Ilse Pluimers from the Netherlands. The nature of the course meant that the peloton would stay pretty much together for the duration, although this also resulted in a number of crashes.

The first break of the day came from Kazakhstan’s Diana Bukanova whose solo attack lasted for around 25km and saw her get an advantage of nearly a minute over the peloton before she was reeled in with 50km to go. A crash just after Bukanova was caught would see Pluimers’ hopes for a medal dashed, although those involved would later form a group to try and get back on.

This crash coincided with the first of a handful of attempts by Jastrab to split the field, although the next main attack would come from France’s Cedrine Kerbaol, who was quickly followed by the sole Chilean in the race, Catalina Anais Soto Campos. The pair launched their attack with around 25km of the race remaining, and would build up a gap of around 30 seconds which they would retain until around 6km to go when Soto Campos launched a solo attack. Soto Campos would eventually be caught with around 3km to go.

With around 2km remaining, Russian Junior Women’s World Time Trial Champion, Aigul Gareeva and Jastrab launched an attack and with 500m to go, it was touch and go as the duo had around 100m advantage on the peloton although another crash in the final 500m did little to stop De Wilde and Nooijen who made up significant ground to deny Gareeva of a second World Championship medal. Jastrab’s advantage by this point was unassailable and she held on to give USA a third world title in as many days.