Road World Championships: Team Sky fourth, BMC take gold

The elite individual events at the Road World Championships begin on Tuesday

Team Sky missed out on a medal by only two seconds in the team time trial at the Road World Championships, while American-based BMC Racing took gold.

BMC completed the 57.1km course in one hour, three minutes and 29.85 seconds to finish ahead of Orica GreenEdge.

As Salvatore Puccio and Geraint Thomas fell off the pace, British-based Team Sky were down to four men and narrowly beaten by Omega Pharma-Quick Step.

"The four guys did an amazing job," sports director Nicolas Portal said.

With Puccio and Thomas gone in the early stages, it was left to Dario Cataldo, Vasil Kiryienka, Kanstantsin Siutsou and Sir Bradley Wiggins to complete the course.

"Our plan was to ride hard from the start and we averaged 60kph during the first 11km," Portal added.

"That showed a huge statement of intent but the effort meant Salvatore was dropped after the first checkpoint and Geraint fell off the pace shortly before the second."

Specialized-Lululemon won a third consecutive women's world team time trial title, finishing one minute, 17 seconds ahead of Orica-AIS over the 36km course, with Astana-BePink in third.