UCI Road World Championships 2020

The road

At the start

Imola at short notice, Van Aert favourite

Switzerland's limits on public gatherings killed the Aigle-Martigny Worlds, and Imola picked the race up at a few weeks' notice: nine laps of the Mazzolano and the Cima Gallisterna wrapped around a Formula 1 circuit, 4,600 metres of climbing, a course France's coach calls one for puncheurs who can climb. Van Aert is the overwhelming favourite after Strade Bianche, San Remo and a Tour spent doing everything at once.

How it was won

1. 169 km to go

   France burn the breakaway

   Seven went up the road at the start and two are left. On the seventh time up the Cima Gallisterna the French team string the race out and accelerate over the top, and Koch and Traeen's day is over with 69 kilometres to run.

2. 240 km to go

   Pogačar goes with forty to go

   Italy finally show themselves on the Gallisterna and UAE's Tour winner takes the invitation: Tadej Pogačar rips clear on the steepest ramp and the bunch panics behind him. He crests ten seconds up, thirty riders scrambling over the top after him.

3. 329 km to go

   The bell, and 25 seconds

   Pogačar hits the Autodromo tarmac fifteen seconds clear and stretches it to twenty-five along the flat, motor-racing straights as the bell rings for the last lap. Belgium, six deep, have the whole race on their shoulders.

4. 422 km to go

   Dumoulin bridges

   On the last time up the Mazzolano, Tom Dumoulin jumps out of the bunch and hauls himself onto the wheel of the man who beat him in France a week ago. Guillaume Martin brings them both back with 21 kilometres left, and Pogačar is a defender now.

5. 516 km to go

   Belgium shut the door

   Nibali, Van Aert, Landa and Urán probe; then six riders get a gap with Greg Van Avermaet in it and his leader briefly on the wrong side of it. Belgium have policed this finale all afternoon and they close it now, delivering the race to the foot of the last climb in one piece.

6. 612 km to go

   Alaphilippe attacks the last Gallisterna

   Two and a third kilometres at 7.3%, the ninth time today, and twelve kilometres from the line Julian Alaphilippe stands up and simply leaves. Nobody answers — not Van Aert, not Hirschi, not Kwiatkowski, not the Belgian team that has run the day. He goes over the top with a handful of seconds and a downhill and a motor-racing circuit between him and the rainbow jersey, chased by the best group of pursuers anyone could assemble.

7. 7At the line

   Rainbow bands at Imola

   The chase never gets closer than about twenty seconds. Alaphilippe crosses the line on the Imola circuit twenty-four ahead of Van Aert, who beats Hirschi for silver, and France have a world champion for the first time since 1997.

The result