Great Britain's 'Plan B' for the mixed relay team time trial at the UCI Road World Championships came close to success on Tuesday, the six-rider squad ending up just 12 seconds short of adding to their 2019 bronze medal in the discipline.
The team were forced to call up U23 rider Josh Charlton in a last-minute substitution for Ben Turner, who fell ill with COVID-19 before the race. And if the late call-up wasn't enough to disrupt team plans, the 20-year-old rider pulled out partway through the men's leg of the race with an eye on Wednesday's U23 time trial.
Still, he and his British teammates – Dan Bigham, Elynor Bäckstedt, Anna Shackley, Ethan Vernon, and Pfeiffer Georgi – put in one of the rides of the day to finish fourth, 1:03 down on gold medallists Switzerland and just behind third-placed Germany.
"Frustrating, eh? It seems like it's the World Championships of 'nearly' kind of results," Bigham told Cyclingnews after the race, referring to his half-a-hundredth of a second loss to Filippo Ganna in Sunday's individual pursuit final.
"We lost Ben yesterday with COVID, so then with bringing Josh in, who has a race tomorrow, the plan was always that he does a few turns and pull out. To ride basically the whole thing with two and be in the mix is satisfying for sure, but we come here to win or at least get on the podium.
"We fought for that, but in hindsight looking back over the last week, it's definitely one that will stick in my memory for different reasons – not for being successful but for learning lessons the hard way."
Bigham said that various members of the Great Britain squad have had different focuses throughout the week, admitting that the mixed relay team time trial was his third priority behind the team pursuit and individual pursuit on the track.
Nevertheless, despite a far-from-ideal lead-up to the mixed relay team time trial and not being able to fully prepare for the course, Bigham said that the team did the best they could.
"Even though we've done recces and have worked on optimising around it, it's still it's a course which rewards preparation," he said. "I think we did the best we could with what we had, but when we have so many different priorities, it's not the easiest thing to come into and sit on the start line thinking 'there's nothing more we could have done here'. It's more of an 'it would've been nice if…' scenario.
"In hindsight having someone with a pure focus on it could be beneficial for sure – it probably would have got us onto that podium," he added. "But we have to do what we can with the people we have, and unfortunately, there isn't an infinite number of riders in the UK.
"When you bring together MTB, downhill, track, road, it spreads out the talent and people have their own ambitions, so it's about making do with what you have, and I think considering all that we've done pretty damn well."
Bigham is known for his tendency to search out marginal aerodynamic gains during time trials and track events, though said that, on such a technical course, the only real setup change was to run lower tyre pressure, saying "there are no aero or power tricks here".
The course itself – the Glasgow city centre circuit, which features many of the same roads and rises as the much-criticised road race courses – offered a different challenge to many time trials, though Bigham wasn't adding his voice to the numerous riders who have called the circuit unsuitable for road racing.
"In my opinion of time trialling – and of cycling in general – is that you should be challenged in every aspect of being a cyclist," he said. "This is a course which suits somebody who can execute – and excellent world-class cornering performance combined with that power, punchiness, and durability.
"In the team time trial today, which rewarded the people who can corner as a team confidently. I think that, as a group, we did that. OK, it's literally a thrown-together mix of people that historically haven't ridden together. But I don't agree with people who criticise the course because it's challenging people in a different way, we can still race around it, and it just brings out the best in athletes.
"It's literally cornering, so a lot of it is to do with optimal tyre pressure and the ability to select the right lines. A 5% difference in cornering ability is worth a minute on this course, so it's obviously huge.
"That's just for one team, too, so throw two teams together, and you've got two minutes – it's literally decided by a couple of percent. We knew that from the start, and therefore it was all about line selection and how do you corner cohesively and quickly as a team to save that energy."
Away from competing himself, Bigham works with Ineos Grenadiers as a performance engineer, advising on time trials and aerodynamics. He'll see several of his charges – including Geraint Thomas, Josh Tarling, and Filippo Ganna (who he advised for the World Hour Record) – take on the individual time trial in Stirling on Friday. So, any predictions?
"I can tell that it's going to be a bloody good race," he laughed. "That's about my only prediction. The model is quite fun to look at because there are a lot of what-if scenarios we can run.
"Obviously, we have a very good understanding of Ganna, Geraint and Josh and how they perform in time trials. They're all very different as athletes go, but they're all very closely packed when it comes down to performance. A lot of it will come down to how well they execute their own individual performances, but I think it's going to be a damn good time trial."
