UCI Road World Championships 2012

The road

At the start

The Cauberg, and 1,700 metres beyond it

Valkenburg for the fifth time, on the roads of the Amstel Gold Race, and everything turns on one difference: at Amstel they empty themselves on the Cauberg because the line is at the top; today it sits 1,700 metres past it. Spain bring Contador, back from suspension, with Rodríguez, Valverde, Sánchez and Freire chasing a record fourth title. Belgium bring Gilbert, who has won almost nothing all year.

How it was won

1. 1163 km to go

   Cavendish climbs off; Contador attacks

   The race has been Great Britain's all morning, exactly as it was a year ago, with number one on the defending champion's back. Then Belgium line up in front of Gilbert and Boonen, the pace goes up, and Mark Cavendish — who ruled himself out of this course months ago — sits up and abandons. In the same minute, on the first passage of the Cauberg, Alberto Contador attacks.

2. 2130 km to go

   A thirty-man move goes clear

   Contador's dig on the Cauberg sends Gesink and Voeckler and a handful of others after him, Flecha's group catches the leaders, and out of the confusion comes a front group of nearly thirty riders with Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Britain and the host nation all represented. It is far too big and far too strong to ignore.

3. 350 km to go

   A crash on the seventh lap

   Lastras and Bouet have already burned themselves out on the front when the peloton comes down behind them. The field is cut to fifty-seven riders, a number of medal hopes end sitting in the road, and Peter Sagan loses almost his entire team in one go.

4. 424 km to go

   Talansky, then Stannard, on the Bemelerberg

   Andrew Talansky attacks to make sure the Americans' morning has not been wasted, and Ian Stannard lurches across to him. For a few kilometres it looks like a springboard the favourites could use — and then the headwind and three hundred kilometres of legs put an end to it.

5. 517 km to go

   Nibali's frustration

   Penultimate time up the Cauberg and tactics give way to temper. Vincenzo Nibali attacks and is shut down inside a hundred metres, then again, and is left gesticulating at riders who will not help him make the race hard. Everybody now knows what everybody else is thinking: if this climb does not split it, it is a sprint.

6. 61 km to go

   Gilbert goes in the big ring

   Contador and Samuel Sánchez take two long pulls, Nibali sets the pace on the approach and burns the last of himself doing it, and Luca Paolini leads onto the lower slopes to launch the Italian who no longer has anything left. Behind Paolini, four Belgian jerseys. Then the wall of the Cauberg arrives and Philippe Gilbert stands up in the big ring — no shifting, no rocking, just an acceleration nobody in the world can hold — and rides out of the front group with a season of disappointment behind him and 1,700 metres of road in front.

7. 7At the line

   The rainbow jersey, in Valkenburg

   He crosses the line alone with time to look back, a Belgian world champion on Dutch roads an hour from home. Edvald Boasson Hagen leads the chase in for silver, Alejandro Valverde takes bronze — and the twelve months in which Gilbert had won nothing worth mentioning end in the only jersey he did not have.

The result