Injured Dutch cycling legend Annemiek van Vleuten has stunned her rivals to win the women's road race at the world championships in Wollongong.
Van Vleuten struck with 600m left, attacking the lead group for an improbable win in Saturday's 164.3km road race.
She and her teammates were in disbelief at the finish at the remarkable win.
Her second road race title came after van Vleuten crashed in Wednesday's mixed team relay at the worlds and suffered an elbow fracture.
It adds to van Vleuten's legend as one of the toughest riders in world cycling.
No Australians were at the front at the finish, with Alex Manly the highest-placed home rider at 15th, 13 seconds off the pace.
A Dutch woman has finished on the women's elite road race podium in all but three of the last 20 worlds.
The pulsating road race came down to a front group of nine, and van Vleuten caught them napping with her powerful final surge.
Belgian Lotte Kopekcy bashed her handlebar in frustration as she finished second, while Italian Silvia Persico took the bronze medal.
The powerful Dutch team suffered a blow when Demi Vollering pulled out because of COVID-19 and they were on the back foot for much of the race.
Inside the last 50km there was still a big peloton at the front of the field.
Suddenly the Australians launched a succession of attacks, clearly keen to ratchet up the pace for the last two of the six finishing laps.
At two laps to go, Australian domestique Sarah Roy was in the midst of a big solo charge that took the race to the foot of the crucial Mt Pleasant climb.
As heavy rain fell, Polish star Katarzyna Niewiadoma attacked on the steep ascent and blew the race apart.
Niewiadoma, German Liane Lippert, Italian Elisa Longo Borghini, Dane Cecilie Ludwig and South African Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio formed a formidable lead group.
Significantly, there were no Dutch or Australians among them.
But the chase group, represented heavily by the host nations and the Netherlands, only trailed by 23 seconds at the start of the final lap.
Dutch rider Ellen van Dijk, who won her third elite time trial world championship last Sunday, used her formidable power to drive the pace at the front of the chase group.
The five leaders were caught with 13km left but they were at the front again at the top of Mt Pleasant on the last lap.
Again, the Australians and Dutch did not have the climbing strength to go with the surge, but the race came together perfectly for van Vleuten's astonishing finish.
