Sometimes, more than with legs or with the mind, some results or successes that seemed difficult to achieve come thanks to the heart. Giving concrete proof of this today, in the time trial valid as the second half-stage of the Sibiu Tour 2026, was Julius Johansen who, performing three seconds better than his teammate Ivo Oliveira, celebrated a victory, his third of the season, conquered thanks to a fundamental internal drive.

"The victory is for my girlfriend: today, in fact, we celebrate our ninth anniversary together and by winning this success I'll now be able to bring her flowers home" revealed sweetly the powerful Danish rider who, starting from the ramp in Sibiu with this determination, ended up securing yet another triumph of 2026 in a time trial equal to or less than 15 kilometers, an exercise for which he is evidently increasingly suited.

"To be honest, I'm quite surprised to be so good at this type of race but, apparently, it's my specialty. Today's race was much shorter than the other two I won this season and much more technical. Being rather good from this point of view, I had good hopes of performing well even though I'm usually not the best in terms of maximum power and this gave me some concern. In the end, I'm very happy to have finished the time trial this way: winning is always difficult and doing it after spending two hours on the hot seat makes it even more beautiful" explained the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider who, unlike his teammate Oliveira (then second), preferred not to use a time trial bike for today's short race.

"My assessment is that this was a race too technical to tackle with a time trial bike. Furthermore, I preferred to have a bike with slightly wider tires because I saw that many on a course like this had flats and I was afraid of running into the same problem, so I opted for the safer solution convinced that, if I managed to do well, I could win even with wider tires" admitted Johansen who, having given his team the first minimum objective, can now put himself at the service of his teammates to increase the team's haul.

"I think we have a really good team to face the coming days in the best way. We have two strong climbers with us so we hope to be able to win more stage victories and, if all goes well, also the general classification: we're optimistic, we'll see at the end how it goes" declared Johansen, a rider who, despite these repeated high-level performances, for now does not have participation in the Canadian Worlds with his national team in his sights.

"To be honest, last week we competed in the National Championships over a more serious distance and I was quite disappointed with my performance. Today I'm simply happy to have won another first place, for the rest we'll see. I don't expect to go to the Worlds at all, but it's certainly something I'll work on in the future and perhaps already next year" concluded determinedly the twenty-six-year-old from Blovsstrød.