Hayter and Henderson step up

British champions claim the biggest wins of their career

- Vern Pitt

Both Ethan Hayter and Anna Henderson took the biggest road wins of their career last week at the Tour de Romandie and Festival Elsy Jacobs respectively.

Both won the prologue time trials of their respective races and Hayter also sprinted to victory on stage two, having lost the leader’s jersey on the stage that fell between them after he was caught in a crash.

Londoner Hayter was claiming his first World-Tour wins. The prologue was especially impressive as he bested time trial specialist and near-eventual winner Rohan Dennis (Jumbo-Visma) over the six-minute effort, though it is worth noting the short distance of a prologue will often favour the more explosive riders like Hayter over a pure tester like Dennis.

After that high, Hayter, who contracted Covid at the start of the year, said: “I had a couple of setbacks at the start of the year, I’ve taken a break from racing and trained really hard and to come back like this is nice… It’s been a while since I last raced, so it was a shock to the system! I spent a lot of time at 600 watts on the uphill drags and I actually cornered quite fast too. I went out hard and pushed on a few of the corners, though I took the last one quite steady as I was hitting 70kph.”

The result didn’t surprise the British national time trial champion though, with the 23-year-old suggesting he has the ability to produce strong performances regardless of the field.

“To be honest it’s not that much of a surprise,” he said. “I knew that I was capable of it on a good day. Last year I was top 10 in the Worlds, and top 10 in Paris-Nice. This is a bit of a step up but I knew that I would be close.”