It wasn't quite up there with the bike throw of Bradley Wiggins at the 2009 Worlds or David Millar's epic outburst on stage 5 of the 2008 Giro, but Ethan Hayter was still pretty annoyed when his bike let him down during his TT ride at the Worlds in Wollongong, Australia, early this morning.
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The British rider was fastest through the first checkpoint before his Shimano shifters caused him problems. His chain slipped off at the end of the opening lap of of the circuit - with 18.5km remaining - and while he made an effort to get it back on, he was forced to stop and change bikes. To compound his problems, his spare bike did not match the set-up of the TT bike he had started the race on.
The 24-year-old ended the day in 4th place. However, he was 31 seconds off bronze medal winner Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) so it's not certain his forced stop cost him a medal.
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He believed the fact he was on a new Pinarello TT bike with mismatched drivetrain components had caused the problem - explaining "it's that Shimano don't make chainring shifters on the new gears".
"I was trying to change chainring and it wasn't quite shifting so I pressed it again, and it dropped off. And there was no way to get it back on without the chairing shifter. So I had to swap bikes; it was the fastest thing to do that time. I think I limited my losses quite well from that point."
He added as the replacement bike he got from his team car was not the same - with different brakes and handlebars - it did not handle the same, though he did his best for the remainder of his race.
