The World Championships: Alejandro Valverde's white whale

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Alejandro Valverde on the podium in Ponferrada his sixth podium visit at the World Championships(Image credit: Getty Images)

Alejandro Valverde is one of the favourites to win the gold medal in the men's World Championships road race on Sunday. If he does so, he will finally banish a 15-year itch and purge a long line of missed chances.

On an undulating city course in Hamilton, Canada, Spain had pinned their hopes on Oscar Freire, but the two-time world champion's race was blighted by mechanical problems. When Astarloa asked him how he was feeling going into the final lap, he received the answer: "I can hang back for a sprint, but I can't follow [Paolo] Bettini, so if he goes, you go with him." And so on the climb of Beckett Drive, Astarloa followed a big attack from Peter Van Petegem, forming a group with Bettini, Michael Boogerd, Oscar Camenzind, and Bo Hamburger.

As the cooperation waned, the peloton started to come back, but it was Valverde who inspired the winning move as he began to make his way over to the lead group in a three-man counter attack. The 23-year-old was inexperienced but hardly a stranger, having finished third at the Vuelta a España the previous month. "I looked around and saw a group coming, and I saw Valverde, and I knew that he could do a bit of 'braking' in the group - having Valverde there, maybe the others wouldn't have been so eager to chase me down," Astarloa said.

He had already gone some way to securing that reputation when he won in Courchevel at the Tour de France but, having subsequently crashed out of the Tour and only ridden one race since, few expected much of Valverde in Madrid. That was partly down to the course, which contained a couple of short climbs but was widely predicted to end in a large bunch sprint, with the likes of Alessandro Petacchi, Robbie McEwan, and Erik Zabel among the favourites. Valverde, however, already knew the terrain around the Spanish capital was fertile for an upset and he was one of the main aggressors as a host of riders piled in to attack the 21km circuit.

Spain's Oscar Pereiro was the author of one of the first meaningful attacks inside the final couple of hours of racing, and soon Valverde was up the road with him in a group of 10. A key figure in there was Paolo Bettini, whose sustained aggression suggested Petacchi had become Plan B for the Italians. Valverde responded to Bettini's accelerations and made several of his own. Spain's coach would later suggest he was maybe too impulsive, too excitable.

On the one hand, things had panned out perfectly for Valverde, as Petacchi, Zabel, and McEwan were in a group half a minute further back. On the other, the lead group contained Tom Boonen, winner of 12 races that season, among them the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Valverde, impulsive to the last, opened up the sprint from nearly 300 metres out, and made a good fist of it. Boonen, however, swooped down like a bird of prey and burst clear to Valverde's left, moving fully in front to claim a convincing victory.

But then Samuel Sánchez appeared on the front under the flamme rouge and everything changed. Valverde was tucked onto the wheel as his teammate accelerated through a sweeping right-hand bend, and Xavier Florencio put the brakes on behind to create the split as they passed under a railway bridge. By the time they emerged into the light, through a left-hand bend, the Spanish duo were away with Paolo Bettini and Erik Zabel.

Sánchez continued his effort and led out the sprint for Valverde, a handful of seconds clear of the peloton, but the Spaniard was unable to live with Zabel and Bettini, the Italian overhauling the German to take his first world title. Spain's late play had essentially catapulted Valverde to a medal, but the nature of the riders who'd jumped aboard meant the rainbow jersey would continue to elude him.

Spain had one of the strongest teams and had taken the initiative, with Alberto Contador, Juan Antonio Flecha, and Pablo Lastras in a break on the early local laps around Valkenburg. The race, however, was always going to come down to the late ascent of the Cauberg - the short, punchy climb used in the Amstel Gold Race. After some initial forcing from the Italians, Belgium's Philippe Gilbert bludgeoned his way clear, and was never seen again.

Valverde was initially absent from the shot as the reactions came, but soon enough he found himself up in a chase group with Edvald Boasson Hagen and Alexandr Kolobnev. That trio was nowhere near cooperative enough to peg back Gilbert, who already had a handsome margin in the final kilometre, and the gold medal was gone. Boasson Hagen claimed second place with a long-range sprint-cum-attack and Valverde had to settle for bronze as the rest of the field bore down.

The podium scenes are already stuff of Worlds legend. Over on the left, Joaquim Rodríguez is barely able to lift the bouquet of flowers above his head, and utterly unable to hold back the tears. On the right, Valverde looks sheepish, his eyes fixed on nothing in particular and certainly not to the man in matching kit over to his right. In the middle of the two stands a beaming Rui Costa, the Portuguese rider who can barely believe he is world champion. You can pretty much work out the story of the race from that one picture.

It was a rain-soaked, attritional day of racing in Florence, where only 61 riders made it to the finish. Rodríguez attacked with Vincenzo Nibali the final time up the Fiesole climb and they were joined on the descent by Valverde, Costa and Rigoberto Urán, though the latter soon crashed out of contention. Rodríguez accelerated up Via Salviati, and Nibali was the one who closed it down, dragging Costa and Valverde across. Rodríguez went again with two kilometres to go and this time Nibali didn't respond. Valverde, however, only seemed to have eyes for the Italian, and failed to react when Costa skipped away in pursuit of Rodríguez. Spain's numerical advantage had been swiftly wiped out and now Rodríguez was the underdog in a two-up sprint for the rainbow jersey. You can almost see Nibali asking Valverde what he's playing at. Sure enough, Costa, impervious to Rodríguez's somewhat desperate mind games, took the victory, while Valverde sprinted home for bronze 15 seconds later.

This time, Spain seemed to unite more cohesively around Valverde, who was well suited to the rolling Ponferrada course. They did the lion's share of the work on the front of the peloton on the final lap to keep the breakaway riders in check, and Rodríguez turned about to be a loyal lieutenant, putting in the acceleration to split the group and set up a Valverde attack on the last incline in the final 5km.

Patrick is a freelance sports writer and editor. He’s an NCTJ-accredited journalist with a bachelor’s degree in modern languages (French and Spanish). Patrick worked full-time at Cyclingnews for eight years between 2015 and 2023, latterly as Deputy Editor.