UCI Road World Championships 2015

The road

How it was won

1. 136 km to go

   The last long move is reeled in

   Boivin, Pantano, Phinney and Siutsou have held the front of the race for lap after lap, and they are finally swallowed just as the road tips up into Libby Hill Park with two laps to go.

2. 220 km to go

   Boonen surges on the cobbles

   Mollema, Boonen, Amador, Kwiatkowski, Stannard, Moreno and Viviani slip away, and Boonen throws everything at the Libby Hill cobbles on the penultimate lap. It is not enough; they are caught before the line.

3. 316 km to go

   Dumoulin drills it under the bell

   Tom Dumoulin leads the field across the line for the last time and pushes so hard that a gap yawns open behind him. Only Viacheslav Kuznetsov can hold the wheel.

4. 44 km to go

   Libby Hill, final time

   Farrar and Siutsou are swept up at the foot of the park as the Italian and Belgian teams come past at speed. Štybar attacks first on the cobbles, Degenkolb and Van Avermaet answer, and a select group crests the hill.

5. 53 km to go

   Sagan on 23rd Street

   Three kilometres from a rainbow jersey the road rears to nineteen per cent over rough cobbles, and Peter Sagan gets out of the saddle and simply rides away from the best classics riders in the world. He crests it with a few bike lengths — the whole of his season, and the previous two, compressed into 200 metres of climbing.

6. 61 km to go

   Tucked, cornered, gone

   He folds into a tuck on the descent and takes the two fast turns at the bottom cleaner than the chase behind him — the three seconds he will win by are earned right here. Up Governor Street for the last time, Van Avermaet and Terpstra cannot make a metre back.

7. 7At the line

   Sagan is world champion

   Down Broad Street with three seconds in hand, Sagan crosses the line alone in Richmond. Michael Matthews wins the sprint for silver, Ramūnas Navardauskas takes bronze.

The result