UCI Road World Championships 2022

The road

At the start

Wollongong, and the long way from Europe

The Worlds have come to Australia for the first time in twelve years, and travel costs have kept part of the peloton at home. Not the headliners: Julian Alaphilippe defends two rainbow jerseys, Wout van Aert skipped the time trial for this, Tadej Pogačar arrives off victory in Montreal and Remco Evenepoel off the Vuelta. Michael Matthews carries the host nation. Mount Keira once, then Mount Pleasant twelve times.

How it was won

1. 1226 km to go

   Mount Keira splits the day open

   The one ascent of Mount Keira comes barely forty kilometres in, and the race breaks apart on it with more than two hundred kilometres still to ride. There are no race radios here, so the front group sits up and looks around, counting who is present and who is missing, nobody yet willing to commit to a day this long.

2. 277 km to go

   O'Connor thins the break

   Seventy-seven kilometres out, Ben O'Connor starts tearing at the breakaway on Mount Pleasant. Battistella helps him do it, his own teammate Plapp is among the casualties, and eight riders come over the top.

3. 358 km to go

   Belgium arrive in a blink

   Nineteen counter-attackers come across from the bunch, and three of them are Belgian — Evenepoel with Pieter Serry and Quinten Hermans for company. With fifty-eight kilometres left a group of twenty-five holds a minute and a half, and behind them the peloton still cannot agree on whether to chase.

4. 442 km to go

   Serry empties himself and drifts back

   Evenepoel has been throwing himself at this climb every lap out of sheer appetite; Serry has been holding the pace firm but sane behind him. Forty-two kilometres from home the domestique is finished and slides away, the break slows to a crawl waiting for someone to move, and the peloton finally wakes up — Pogačar driving it, Fred Wright setting off alone.

5. 534 km to go

   The attack, thirty-four out

   Evenepoel crosses the line with two laps to run and keeps accelerating, a single searing effort out of the group. Only Alexey Lutsenko can get on the wheel, and the Kazakh has to bury himself to do it.

6. 625 km to go

   Mount Pleasant, and the rainbow

   Twenty-five kilometres from home he hits the climb again and turns the same enormous gear, teeth bared, head low over the bars. Lutsenko is gone within a few hundred metres. On this one hill, barely a kilometre of it, the gap to the four chasers triples to a minute — and a 22-year-old is riding away from the entire world in front of a grandstand that can see every metre of it.

7. 7At the line

   Alone in Wollongong, by 2:21

   Lutsenko is swallowed with five kilometres left and the rest scrap for the minor placings: Christophe Laporte second, Michael Matthews third for the host nation, both at 2:21. Evenepoel becomes the first rider since Greg LeMond to take a Grand Tour and the rainbow jersey in the same season.

The result