UCI Road World Championships 2011

The road

At the start

Flat, fast, and built for a sprinter

Two hundred and sixty-six kilometres in Denmark, almost all of it on a fourteen-kilometre circuit at Rudersdal with nothing on it steep enough to drop anybody, and a slight drag up to the line. Great Britain have brought seven riders and one plan: Mark Cavendish, who has just taken five stages and the green jersey at the Tour. No British rider has worn the rainbow jersey since Tom Simpson in 1965.

How it was won

1. 1112 km to go

   Van Summeren cracks the truce

   Seven British riders have driven the front of this race since Copenhagen and the break's lead is down to four minutes. Coming up through the finish with eight laps left, Johan Van Summeren accelerates on the right; Offredo takes his wheel, Paolini sprints across, Kaisen and Clarke follow.

2. 266 km to go

   Eleven at the front

   The two groups ahead of the bunch join into one, and France and Belgium each have two riders in it. Two minutes is all they have, and Great Britain settle into a steady pursuit and calmly shut down every other rider who tries to leave.

3. 356 km to go

   Everyone tries to burn Britain

   Anders Lund attacks in front of a Danish crowd with four laps to go, and half a dozen nations use it as an excuse to send riders across — not to win with Lund, but to make the British chase until they break. Within a lap the men in white are back on the front, and the only question is what it has cost them.

4. 428 km to go

   Roux times it well and it still fails

   Onto the penultimate lap, with the break now visible from the bunch on the long straights, Anthony Roux jumps away from the men he has spent all afternoon working with. Twenty seconds, twenty-eight kilometres, and Bradley Wiggins coming to the front behind him.

5. 57 km to go

   Wiggins motors past

   Hoogerland gives everything to keep the escape alive and it is not remotely enough. Voeckler makes one last effort with seven kilometres left and eases up almost at once, because the world time trial silver medallist has simply arrived alongside him at a speed nobody up the road can live with.

6. 6At the line

   The last corner, and nobody is there

   Ian Stannard drags Cavendish through the pack inside two kilometres and takes him to the very front as the bunch sweeps round the final bend. Then Stannard empties and pulls aside, and Geraint Thomas looks back for his sprinter and cannot see him. Rather than lead out nobody, Thomas swings off too, and for one long second the whole British race looks lost.

7. 7At the line

   Rudersdal

   The pace drops for a heartbeat when Thomas pulls over, and that heartbeat is everything. Cavendish comes up the right-hand barrier through a gap barely wider than his handlebars, launches at 150 metres on the drag to the line, and beats Matt Goss by a wheel. Greipel takes bronze by a tyre's width from Cancellara, and Britain has the rainbow jersey again after 46 years.

The result