UCI Road World Championships 2019

The road

At the start

Leeds to Harrogate, 24km shorter

Flooding has forced the moors section out of the route overnight and two extra laps of the fourteen-kilometre Harrogate circuit in to replace it, so what leaves Leeds is 261 kilometres rather than 285. It leaves in rain that shows no sign of stopping. Belgium look the strongest team here: Gilbert, Van Avermaet, Evenepoel, Naesen, Teuns. Sagan is chasing a record fourth rainbow jersey.

How it was won

1. 1230 km to go

   Eleven go up the road

   Out of Leeds and into the rain, eleven riders take the day's escape — Roglič, Quintana, Carapaz, Dillier, Bodnar and Howes among them — and by 230 kilometres to go they have 1:50 on a peloton content to let them have it.

2. 2125 km to go

   Onto the circuit, Gilbert goes down

   The break gets a huge cheer crossing the line for the first time to begin nine laps of the fourteen-kilometre Harrogate circuit. Seconds later the peloton turns onto Parliament Street and Philippe Gilbert is at the bottom of a pile of bodies. Evenepoel drops back to pace him; neither of them will see the front of the race again.

3. 382 km to go

   Half the field climbs off

   France put Cavagna on the front and the cold does the rest. Valverde abandons in his rainbow jersey, Jungels goes, Ulissi goes, Bennett is blown out the back on Oak Lane — with eighty kilometres left there are fewer than a hundred riders still in the race.

4. 440 km to go

   Politt lights the finale

   With the break's lead down to twenty-seven seconds Nils Politt attacks, Dylan Teuns straight onto him, Pöstlberger and Dani Martínez across — the first real move of the endgame.

5. 533 km to go

   Van der Poel leaps

   Thirty-three kilometres out Mathieu van der Poel bursts out of the peloton with Matteo Trentin on his wheel and ploughs straight past the chasers. When the junction is made there are five in front — Van der Poel, Moscon, Pedersen, Küng and Trentin — and Italy have two of them.

6. 613 km to go

   Van der Poel cracks

   A lap to go and forty-eight seconds in hand, and then, inexplicably, the strongest man in the race comes undone: at 12.7 kilometres Van der Poel is gone, six hours of Yorkshire rain finally catching a rider who has never gone this far.

7. 7At the line

   Pedersen takes the rainbow jersey

   Moscon is dropped at five kilometres and three are left for the medals. Trentin, the fastest of them on any other day, tucks in at the back with two to go and waits — and when the sprint comes up the soaking Parliament Street drag there is nothing in his legs. Mads Pedersen, twenty-three and unfancied, comes past him and Küng to become Denmark's first men's world champion.

The result