- Italian pips Dutch legend at world championships in Flanders
- Britain’s 17-year-old Zoe Bäckstedt wins gold in junior road race
Ripping up the script written by the Dutch women in the past four world championships, the Italian Elisa Balsamo snatched the road race title from under the noses of a dominant Netherlands squad. One of the sport’s greatest of all time, Marianne Vos, finished in tears, less than a bike length behind after a gruelling 157km around Flanders.
Balsamo, the 2016 world junior champion, and the rest of the Italian team played a tactical blinder by lying low in the final 50km before the finish in Leuven as the Dutch squandered their strength in a constant series of fruitless moves – and other nations squandered theirs with constant responses – as the peloton was whittled down to a front group of about 25.
