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Published on Saturday, 21 September 2013 23:56

Elite Men's World Championships TTT

Montecatina Terme to Firenze, 57.2km

The Elite Men's World Championships Team Time Trial takes place in Tuscany this Sunday. It is an unusual competition compared to the rest of the World Championship's races in that riders ride for their trade teams rather than their countries.

The course is straight and flat and will be extremely fast. The only tricky parts come in the last 5km or so with a number of twists and turns but for the most part it will be full gas all the way for the power men. 

Contenders and Favourites

Tony Martin's Omega Pharma Quick-Step are the odds on favourites for the race at 4/6 best price and it is easy to understand why they are installed as favourites. Tony Martin is just a machine, a Panzerwagen machine but his supporting team is filled with Time Trialling talent. Chavanel, Kwiatkowski, Velits, Vandewalle and Terpstra are all super time triallists and should make a very strong bid for victory.

Next up are Orica Green-Edge and they too are filled with power as OPQS learned to their cost in the Tour de France when they pipped them by less than a second. Luke Durbridge tweeted today that they are ready to rock and they have been training together for nearly 3 weeks, which is more than most of the other teams have had together. Impey and Tuft are really powerful but I'm not sure if the whole team is as powerful as OPQS. At 8/1 with Paddy Power they are a good bet for the top 3 I think, and if things go their way, they might even win it. 

Sky have a very strong squad at the race with Froome, Porte, Kiryienka, Thomas, Siutsou and EBH. They have done a lot of recce work around the course and should give a real good account of themselves I think. With Wiggins winning the Tour of Britain on Sunday, Froome will be looking to win a gold in this I'm sure! At 8/1 with Paddy Power they are worth an each-way bet. 

BMC have a quality line up also with Phinney, Van Garderen, Schar, Cummings and Oss in their ranks, but they have never set the world alight in TTT's and I can't see them breaking in to the top 3, but should be in the top 6.

Radioshack Nissan have Cancellara and Jungels, but I don't think they have the strength in depth to trouble the top 3 in the betting. Some of them may even have trouble keeping up with Fabian!