Some days you watch a bike race.

Last night I watched a bike fight.

Had they got off their bikes with 150m to go and whipped out a mini-pump each and started clattering one other I would not have been surprised.

It was all utterly enthralling – and what no one seemed to notice was that Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney was the key to Vollering’s victory… more on that later.

The early move went as these things usually do — Natalie Quinn and Marte Berg Edseth rolling off the front through the flat run from Brossard into Montréal. It did its job, soaking up kilometres, kept the front of the peloton controlled, with the orange jerseys of the Dutch prominent. A mass crash with 94km to go took out defending champion Magdeleine Vallières Mill, a very sad way for a title defence at home to end, and Paula Blasi too.

The effect though was a leaner, meaner front group.

39 kilometres to go. Vollering went. You could almost sense it, hear it coming, like a fault line opening in the earth – without the fault bit, because this was close to perfection. Vollering is such a beautifully controlled cyclist, her position on the bike, her pedal motion, her shape, it’s one of the purest I’ve seen and reminds me of Van der Poel.

Highly controlled menace.

Her attack wasn’t a dig, nor a probe — she just rode off the front of what remained of the world’s best and never looked back.

Literally.

No radios at Worlds, remember — no directeur sportif in her ear telling her the gap, just her legs, her own read of the race and a total commitment to the move. I watched the whole thing and cannot remember one moment when she looked back. The commentators mentioned that the Dutch support team were handing her bottles with time gaps on stickers on them but that sounds very messy, and she couldn’t have gotten too many updates from that.

She looked to be on her way to destroying the field – but that didn’t happen. The biggest lead she had was around 25 seconds. Reusser went to work behind. Longo Borghini attacked the chase group. Riders got shelled out the back one by one — Squiban, Włodarczyk, Géry — the whole pursuit fragmenting under the pressure of trying to bring back Vollering.

Niewiadoma joined forces with Borghini and then gapped her before latching on to Vollering with 15km still to race. Borghini refused to crumple though and was still in the mix, 15 seconds down, with Berthet dangling just behind her.

Niewiadoma then sat on and let Vollering do the work through that stretch, with the commentators pushing the idea that she was playing games, sandbagging, saving herself for the sprint.

I don’t buy that.

She wasn’t shying away from work — she was empty. She’d just spent everything she had clawing back the best bike rider in the race. There was nothing left for her to give in that moment, it seemed to me.

Then, when Longo Borghini seemed to be about to pull the front duo back as the gap started running down to single digits, Niewiadoma found something, just a little to ensure the Italian would not get back on, and her final thrust helped Vollering win – because without that, I think Borghini would have caught them and taken the sprint.

Instead, Vollering found another gear of her own and smashed it to the line.

All hail the Triple Crown Queen – Giro, Tour, now Worlds — and by her own admission she couldn’t quite process it.

“I think I can still not believe it,” she said after. Fair enough – neither can I, and I only watched it, and I’m so glad I did.

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Some post race quotes:

Demi Vollering

“I think I can still not believe it. I truly believed I had this dream in my heart for a reason. I worked so hard towards this goal. It takes guts to truly believe in this goal with your whole heart and to gather a team around you of such strong girls. They all sacrifice for you.

“It is something you want to achieve in your life. As soon as you turn pro as a cyclist, you dream about these kind of goals. It’s such a hard race to win and we finally made it happen, so I’m proud.”

Elisa Longo Borghini (Bronze)

“I rode to win this race, and I left every single drop of energy that I had on this road. I really wanted the rainbow jersey, but I’m also satisfied because I really gave everything.

“I think as an athlete, you have the duty to give emotion to people and to inspire people. Today, I really wanted to show the grit of the Italians is there, and that women’s cycling is nice to watch and to follow.”

Marlen Reusser (4th)

“I knew it’s not so much about my effort, more about what happens in front. The situation would have been much better if they had still been with three and played more. I knew that if they looked at each other, slowing each other down, then I can come back… But it was stupid to end up in this situation at all.

“Puck (Vollering’s teammate) was the only one who didn’t have to pull, and she tried to disrupt, which is fine, I think. But everybody else had a big reason to pull. Yes, it was my choice, my mistake, but I know that if I’m just sitting on, Demi will have won. If you give her too much of a gap, the race is over. So I started pulling, I showed full commitment, and the others benefited from that.

“In the crucial moment, I ran out of gels and everything, so I was busy with the feeding, incredibly stupid. So I missed the crucial moment.”

Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Silver)

“There is definitely a beauty of having a competitor that’s so strong.”