European Championships 2017

The road

At the start

A flat circuit, and a Danish wind

Herning, and the second elite European championship is the opposite of the first: no Breton hill to sort anybody out, just twelve laps of a flat twenty-kilometre circuit and whatever the wind decides to do with them. Exposed roads and rough farm tracks are the only difficulty on the card, and everything else says sprint. The blue and white jersey Peter Sagan has worn for a year goes to whoever takes it here.

How it was won

1. 1220 km to go

   Twelve times around Herning

   Two hundred and forty kilometres in Denmark means twelve laps of the same twenty, and on paper there is nothing on the circuit to be frightened of. There is on the road: exposed stretches where the wind can cut a peloton in half, and rough farm tracks that will be handing out punctures all afternoon. The day's break goes on the first lap and is let go without an argument.

2. 2100 km to go

   Belgium and Denmark split it

   A hundred kilometres out, on the open roads the hosts have been looking at all day, Belgium and Denmark hit the front and the race comes apart behind them. Elia Viviani is on the wrong side of the split. So is Edvald Boasson Hagen, caught out by a puncture. The morning break is swept up almost as an afterthought, and Italy suddenly has the whole championship to chase.

3. 380 km to go

   Italy pulls it back

   Eighty kilometres to go, and the Italians have undone it — no panic, every rider on the front in turn, and the two halves of the race become one again. Viviani is back where he needs to be, and an hour of wind has changed nothing at all.

4. 460 km to go

   Three let out on a long leash

   A lap later Jens Keukeleire and Imanol Erviti jump away, Pirmin Lang joins them, and they take thirty seconds. Italy declines to chase hard: three riders up the road are the cheapest way there is to keep everybody else in the bunch quiet.

5. 58 km to go

   The attacks that had to be answered

   All together again with thirty-eight kilometres left, and the last lap becomes a queue of riders trying to make sure this does not end in a sprint. Luis León Sánchez goes with ten kilometres to go and is brought straight back. Keukeleire tries once more on a rise, this time with Boasson Hagen and Nikolay Trusov for company, and France chase until Italy takes the job off them.

6. 61 km to go

   Boasson Hagen's last kilometre

   Under the kite Edvald Boasson Hagen goes on his own, and for a few hundred metres it looks like enough. Then comes the finishing straight and the headwind that has been sitting in it all day. They have him back with three hundred metres to go, and riders go down behind as the sprint launches over the top of him.

7. 7At the line

   Kristoff by a tyre width

   Alexander Kristoff opens the sprint himself into the wind and leaves a gap along the barriers, which is either generous or a trap. Viviani takes it — and then the barriers bend away on an awkward curve, the gap closes, and the Italian hesitates for a heartbeat. They come shoulder to shoulder, touching, both throwing the bike at the line. Viviani looks like the winner and is not. Kristoff takes the blue and white jersey by a tyre width, and Viviani is still waving a finger at the barriers when the judges confirm it.

The result