© Sportreport
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The Upper Austrian Rainer Kepplinger showed at the second edition of the eSports World Championships in cycling, which ones on the online platform ZWIFT, a strong race. With 16 kilometers to go, he pulled away from the field with five opponents.
On the final climb, he drove away from his escape companions, but was caught 200 meters from the finish line and ended up in a strong seventh place.
“Unfortunately, the climb was too hard at the end and the pursuers caught up with me. Overall, I’m very happy with my form and seventh place at my first World Championships,” explained the 23-year-old Waldinger. At the beginning of the Corona period, he came to digital cycling, won his first race in the local e-League right away and the trained rower not only earned a lot of respect, but also worked out a contract with Hrinkow Advarics Cycleang, for which he was in the past Season contested his first professional bike race.
Kepplinger, who is known for his strong watt values, was one of the two red-white-red representatives of the second eSports World Championships, which was organized by the World Cycling Association UCI on the digital training and racing platform ZWIFT, alongside ex-pro Stefan Kirchmair. However, his Tyrolean teammate suffered a vertebral fracture in the week before the race and had to withdraw from the start. The Styrian Katharina Machner had to forgo her participation in the women’s event due to a corona disease.
Kepplinger was the only ÖRV starter to hold up the red-white-red flags in the digital race, and impressively so. The Upper Austrian found himself constantly in the top field. “You noticed right from the start that the power density was very high. Not much happened on the first climbs and we were still a really big group,” reported the 24-year-old, who competed in his race in Steyr, in the shop of his Hrinkow Advarics Cycleang team.
“I hadn’t planned to go into a breakaway group, but I immediately noticed that a few strong drivers wanted to break away and I went with them,” said Kepplinger, who, together with five opponents, was able to break away from the field of favorites by up to 20 seconds. Kilometer after kilometer, the sextet was able to keep the lead up to the final climb on the Knickerbocker course in virtual New York: “Then I got everything out of myself.”
Kepplinger broke away from his fellow breakaways and stormed towards the rainbow jersey, but 200 meters from the finish line, German title defender Jason Osborne passed the Austrian on the last uphill stretch. But even Osborne, like Kepplinger, a rower-turned-cyclist who was intern at QuickStep-Alpha Vinyl in Belgium last year, was caught up again. In the end, the two Australians Jay Vine and Freddy Ovett celebrated a double victory for their country. Osborne was third, for Kepplinger there was a great seventh place.
Results:
GOLD: Jay Vine (AUS) 1:15.41
SILVER: Freddy Ovett (AUS) + 0.01
BRONZE: Jason Osborne (GER) + 0.01
7. Rainer Kepplinger (AUT) + 0.03
press info
Austrian Cycling Association
26.02.2022
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