The Dinaric Alps will play host to the 2015 Croatian National Championships, with one of the nation’s climbers likely to be going home with the National Jersey on his shoulders at the end of the day.
A total of 6 riders formed the day’s peleton, with no real team showing themselves as a dominate force. Severstal-Mercator had two riders, whilst 4 other team had just one. Robert Kiserlovski and Kristijan Durasek looked to be the pre-race favourites.
Over the first climb, and no attack in sight for any rider. Carrying a steady tempo, there was hope that it would not stay like this for entire race…
On the descent, Emanuel Kiserlovski and defending champion Domagoj Breznik made their move with no one else wanting to follow. Quickly, a large lead opened between them and the four others.
Kiserlovski was clearly the strong of the two on the remaining climbs, and soon Breznik found his pace too difficult to follow. The Severstal-Mercator man was riding himself to the Croatian National Title.
The victory for Kiserlovski was more than comfortable. He had more than 6 minutes over Breznik as he crossed the line, arms aloft.
The rest of the peleton tried small attacks on the final climb, with R. Kiserlovski breaking free, but even he was outside the time limit in the end. Only two official finishers today…
A flat Time Trail followed the Mountains of the Road Race, and today looked like a battle between Robert Kiserlovski and Kristijan Durasek, just like we had hoped for in the Road Race. They were the clear favourites today.
In the end, there was only one man in this - Kristijan Durasek! Just after the second time check, he had caught Kiserlovski, and continued to ride away from him. The gap at the end was over 3 minutes, as the Fablok rider dominated the race. No-one else got close to him.
So the defending champion keeps the jersey for 2016, with Robert Kiserlovski in second, and Luka Grubic in third.
Emanuel Kiserlovski
