July 28/21 10:45 am - Interviews from the Time Trial with Canuel, Kirchmann & Houle

Posted by Editoress on 07/28/21
 

All three Canadians in today's Olympic time trial finished in the top-15 for their respective races, each spending time on the Hot Seat. Below are our post-race interviews with all three. The women's report and men's report cover the races.

Karol-Ann Canuel (14th) - "I think it was pretty good. I'm happy with my ride, I gave it everything today and left it all on the road. I was hoping to be better but that was the best I could do today. The girls here, the field is so strong. I don't think the heat played a factor, I think everyone is used to it now. For sure it didn't [for me], it was just a hard course. I knew the climb would be hard and I tried to pace it really well. I went full gas, so after [that] I tried to recover; maybe I could have pushed more on the downhill, but I just couldn't. I can't believe it [the Olympic races] are over ... you always hope for better, but that was it, the best I could do."

Karol-Ann Canuel

Leah Kirchmann (12th) - "I think it went quite well. I wanted to see how well I could prepare for this time trial and how well I could execute a good race on the day. I'm really happy with my effort and I think I rode technically really well, through the corners and technical parts of the course quite fast. I was able to stick to the pacing that I wanted and really push to get the most out of myself. Before the race I wasn't thinking about the end result, I just wanted to execute my best race, and I would be happy if that's what I could achieve. So, overall I'm happy with how the day went."

Leah Kirchmann

"The long climb and the steep kicker halfway through [were the hardest], and the climb onto the track was quite steep. There wasn't a lot of recovery from there all the way to the finish. It is quite a challenging time trial course and I suffered on it today. I really happy with my experience here [at the Tokyo Games]. I had such a fun time being surrounded by great team mates and fantastic support staff. It's so much fun also being able to cheer on the rest of Team Canada in the other sports. So I'm definitely taking it as a great experience and motivation for the rest of the cycling season."

Hugo Houle (13th) - "It went well for me, it was a good day. I really started on a good pace and for the first lap I went pretty fast. I was a bit surprised by the heat and got struck a bit on the second [lap], but I was able to keep a really high pace and stay up with the best. When I crossed the line I was first of my wave, and that was pretty good because there were some strong guys. We could see that the second wave was pretty fast; 30 seconds [behind] a guy like [Remco] Evenepoel [Belgium] or [Rigoberto] Uran [Colombia] is an amazing result."

Hugo Houle

"I was saying in the morning, 'if I could be top-15 it would be awesome'. I'm really happy with my ride, I can't say much else; good pacing and I gave it all for all the support I've got from Cycling Canada and Team Canada. I had a support team at the start just for me, so I wanted to do a good ride for them. It could not have gone better then what I did today."

On being on the Hot Seat: "It was great, I don't get that opportunity much. That's the pleasure of being in the first wave. I really enjoyed my time there. I was actually impressed with my time when I started to see the [next] guys coming; I was not expecting to be that good."