Barry went up the road on lap two, against his team’s plan, and stayed there.
Cor Vos
The crowd sang happy birthday as Ashlin Barry jumped up on the podium on Friday, all six-foot-three of him, half-Canadian, half-American, but with the stars and stripes on his shoulders. Both countries can make a claim to him, and both did, so the cheers rang out louder than any so far this Montreal World Championships.
It is Barry’s birthday; he’s 19 today, in his first year in the under-23 ranks, and he rode over 30 kilometres of the difficult Montreal course alone. The Visma-Lease a Bike development rider probably had to win this way, given there are far better climbers in the race, but this was not the plan. He went off script.
“It couldn’t be more opposite of what the plan was,” US team director Mike Creed told Escape Collective after the finish. “After so many years of getting our asses handed to us, it’s really nice to come away with something,” he said later.
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