Brandon McNulty, a UAE Emirates teammate of Tadej Pogacar, succeeded the Slovene as world champion with an unexpected solo win in the men’s UCI road race in Montreal.

In the biggest triumph of his career, the 28-year-old American took his country’s first win in the UCI’s blue riband event since Lance Armstrong’s lone victory in Oslo in 1993.

“I’m really at a loss,” McNulty said. “Until the last hundred metres, I didn’t believe it, I was so tired. I was just dying, but I kept pushing. We have said for weeks now that we had a super strong team. We talked about it, but I knew it would take a miracle. I guess miracles happen.”

McNulty’s 50-second lead at the start of the closing lap of the hilly Montreal circuit was enough to hold on to the finish line, despite a last‑ditch attempt by Tom Pidcock to chase down the American that, at one point, reduced his advantage to only a handful of seconds.

Pidcock was one of the animators of the final hour of racing, which followed the same volatile and unpredictable pattern as the women’s road race on Saturday, which was won by Demi Vollering of the Netherlands. A gruelling race, ridden without the benefit of race radios, was at times chaotic, particularly within the Belgium team’s confused tactics, with the Olympic road race champion, Remco Evenepoel, left once again to ponder what might have been.

With 90 kilometres to race, a select group of a dozen riders, including Pidcock’s British teammate Oscar Onley, slipped clear on the pivotal climb of the Voie Camillien-Houde. That group reduced to an elite six, including the former world champion Mathieu Van der Poel, and this year’s Paris-Roubaix winner, Wout van Aert.

In the constant ebb and flow, the biggest loser, seemingly hamstrung by team tactics, was Van Aert’s fellow Belgian and pre-race favourite Evenepoel, who was seeking to add the road race title to the time trial gold medal he won seven days ago. With the leading group increasing their lead, Paul Seixas’s France team combined with Isaac del Toro of Mexico to lead a nine-man group in pursuit. But Van der Poel, recently the author of a successful 172km lone break in the Tour of Luxembourg, pressed on with Onley, the Slovene Primoz Roglic and Quinn Simmons of the US.

Renewed accelerations from Van der Poel finally distanced Onley and split the peloton to an even greater extent. In a succession of regroupings the lead changed multiple times, until McNulty finally and definitively seized the initiative with just more than 30km to race.

Twenty-four hours after Vollering’s last-gasp win in a brutal women’s road race, McNulty’s victory was equally enthralling. Vollering’s joy at her success was dampened by the UCI’s decision to fine her 1,000 Swiss francs and give her a points deduction and a yellow card for a “non-compliant” racing position. However, the race results were not affected by the post-race ruling.

Katarzyna Niewiadoma, second to Vollering in the Tour de France Femmes this year, claimed another silver medal, but the Dutch rider paid tribute to her rival’s efforts. “In the end, your greatest competitors are also your greatest motivation,” Vollering said.

As the week of competition ended, the Spanish media revealed that one of the stars of the championships, the Spanish teenager Benjamín Noval, winner of the world junior road and time trial titles in Montreal, had escaped being sanctioned by the country’s anti-doping body Celad.

El País reported that in 2024 Noval, who will race for Netcompany Ineos in 2027, had been found working with José “Pepe” Martí, banned for 15 years in the aftermath of the Armstrong doping scandal and prohibited from associating with athletes in any sport. Martí, who remains banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency until June, met with Noval for physiological testing while under Celad surveillance, but Noval, who was only 15 at the time of the incident, was not subjected to any sanction.