American cyclist Brandon McNulty claimed the road race rainbow jersey at the UCI Road World Championships in Montreal, Canada, on Sunday, in one of the most unexpected results of the professional cycling season. The 28-year-old UAE XGR rider attacked with around 33 kilometres remaining, seizing on a moment of hesitation in the lead group to ride away solo and hold off his pursuers all the way to the finish line. Australian Michael Matthews took silver, with Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel sprinting to bronze.

The 273.3-kilometre race, which started in Brossard on the outskirts of Montreal and featured 3,803 metres of climbing on a circuit repeatedly scaling Mont-Royal via the steep Camillien-Houde climb (1.6 km at 7.7%), was expected to suit attacking puncheurs. Van der Poel, the 2023 world champion, set the race alight early, launching repeated attacks from as far as 90 kilometres from the finish alongside Wout van Aert, Quinn Simmons, Primož Roglič, and Oscar Onley. The Dutchman whittled the lead group down to just three before the peloton, driven hard by French team domestique Bruno Amirail, reeled the move back with 34 kilometres to go. It was at precisely that moment, as fatigued riders hesitated and watched one another, that McNulty made his decisive move, opening a 30-second gap almost immediately.

The closing kilometres were tense: McNulty's advantage shrank to as little as eight seconds as Van der Poel made further attempts to close the gap, and Remco Evenepoel — the 2022 world champion, who had struggled to follow the early accelerations — mounted a brief comeback. But indecision among the chasers repeatedly undermined their efforts, and McNulty, an accomplished time trialist by nature, exploited the flatter sections in the final kilometres to pull clear definitively and take the victory.

McNulty becomes only the third American man to win the road race world championship, following Greg LeMond in 1983 and 1989 and Lance Armstrong in 1993. Known primarily as a domestique for two-time defending champion Tadej Pogačar — who was unable to start after a crash at the Vuelta a España — McNulty was given free rein by his team and made the most of the opportunity. Van der Poel, speaking after the race, said he had no regrets about his aggressive tactics. "I think I rode an incredibly strong race," he said, adding that racing without earpieces and on instinct had been one of the day's highlights. For McNulty, it was the defining moment of his career — a solo raid of panache that few saw coming.