American Megan Jastrab Sprints to Gold in Junior Women’s Road Race World Championship – Bicycling

Yorkshire is proving to be the land of opportunity for American riders: Megan Jastrab brought in another gold medal for the USA Cycling team, with a win in the earlier today.

Once again, the cyclists found themselves riding in rainy weather, though the conditions were not as bad as earlier in the week, when road ponding caused several nasty crashes. There were a few minor ones in this race, but none of them held up Jastrab and her teammates for very long.

A shook things up with 19K to go out of the 86K race. The two riders—French cyclist Cédrine Kerbaol and Chilean cyclist Catalina Soto Campos—weren’t successful in the end, as the peloton caught up with them just 3K from the finish.

Jastrab, a 17-year-old with team , is known for her sprinting ability, and she got to show off her talent again in the final push to the finish. She narrowly beat out Belgian rider Julie de Wilde, who finished second, and Dutch rider Lieke Nooijen, who finished third.

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Jastrab was this year’s , as well as the runner up in the national junior women’s individual time trial. Her other successes this year include first place at Trofeo Da Moreno, second place at Gent-Wevelgem, and two stage wins plus the youth, points, and general classification wins at the junior women’s Healthy Ageing Tour.

She’s an equally talented rider on the track as well. Between road and track, Jastrab boasts more than .

Jastrab’s win comes on the heels of the victory of her male counterpart, Quinn Simmons, who won the junior men’s road race yesterday, and Chloe Dygert’s gold medal performance in the women’s elite individual time trial on September 24.

by USA Cycling, Jastrab noted how her team’s success this week served as motivation:

“I think it helped a lot, the team’s morale throughout the whole entire week with the U23s and Zoe and [my] performance in the junior women’s TT’s, the elite women, Quinn and Magnus’ performance yesterday,” she said. “It was just really motivating to see everybody’s hard work come together, and we definitely wanted to keep it going.”

The junior women’s road race was soon followed by the men’s under-23 road race. After the first finisher, Dutch rider Nils Eekhoff was disqualified, it was Italian rider Samuele Battistella who took the gold medal. The silver medal was then secured by Swiss rider Stefan Bissegger, while the bronze medal went to British rider Tom Pidcock.

We’ll see if the Americans can keep their gold medal momentum going this weekend: The women’s elite road race is next on Saturday, and the men’s elite road race wraps up the UCI Road World Championships on Sunday.