Chris Froome pulls out of men's road race at World Championships after Sir ... - Telegraph.co.uk

Having splashed 10 times up and down the roller-coaster climbs of ­Fiesole and Via Salviati amid a dozen separate crashes, the 26-year-old Movistar rider ended up after nearly 7½ hours of rare slog winning a track-style sprint dice by barely two??bike lengths from Spain's Joaquim Rodriguez.

By that time, the inquest into the British failure had already been under way for three hours, with Ellingworth offering withering criticism of the team. Wiggins and Froome were not spared.

Ellingworth had expected Wiggins, following his time trial silver medal, to be the last Briton standing to aid Froome's push; instead, he was the first to pull out, already 13?mins down on the leaders, after just one of the 10 Fiesole circuits, looking as tentative as when he moaned about "des­cending like a girl" in his ill-fated Giro d'Italia campaign here in May.

"He just couldn't go downhill again. Everybody was surprised he wasn't better out there. I am sure he's walking around with his head down because no one wants to perform like that," Ellingworth said.

"If it had been dry, I think he'd have been okay. You can't win time trial silver and not have the form. When you think he beat Fabian Cancellara on the technical section on Wednesday, you would never believe this would happen.

"It's also something for Chris to look at. Chris wasn't good in this weather today and he knows that. They will look at themselves in the mirror tonight and think they didn't do a very good job."

Asked if the team's capitulation had been down to a lack of spirit, Ellingworth said: "Yes. I think it may be that simple. A lot of people were talking the talk beforehand and didn't see it through. No excuses. Each and every one of them underperformed."

Wiggins kept his own counsel but Geraint Thomas, the last of the team to abandon with five laps of the 16.6km Fiesole circuit left, said: "Maybe the whole Giro thing is still playing on Brad's mind a bit. When it comes to fighting for position around corners and stuff, he just puts the brakes on too much and loses position. Once that's happened, it's hard to come back."

Froome himself, troubled with blocked sinuses and a bad back which only worsened with the amount of heavy braking required on the treacherous corners, reckoned only two of the eight team members had pulled their weight.

One was Luke Rowe, the young Welshman who, ironically, had been a late replacement for Tiernan-Locke; the other was Mark Cavendish, who rode "from the heart" at the head of the drenched peloton during the worst of the thunderstorm on the roads from Lucca for much of the 65 miles to Florence, where he was greeted by the madly wonderful sight of thousands of umbrella-shrouded fans huddled beneath Giotto's Campanile.

When the subsequent hilly circuits began, the race, said Froome, was "simply blown to pieces". Cavendish was exhausted, Wiggins went AWOL while a crash for Josh Edmonson and puncture for Steve Cummings saw him lose two more key allies.

Soon, he was friendless and chanceless.

"It was carnage out there," shrugged Thomas.

With not just the Britons suffering. Race commissaires took to the radio to warn riders to be wary but marquee names still skidded out like helpless eels. Little wonder only 61 of 208 actually completed the splashathon.

"All the drains were flooding and at some points we were ankle deep in water," Froome said. "Crashes began because people moving up on the side would get stuck in the gutters."

Still, the last men sliding provided an epic on that final lap, with Rodriguez twice attacking on the hills to eventually break all of his 15 challengers - including the swift danger men Peter Sagan, Cancellara and reigning champ Philippe Gilbert - apart from Costa, who clawed him back to win the decisive sprint.

Vincenzo Nibali, the home favourite who had crashed earlier, returned heroically only to lose out to Spain's Alejandro Valverde for the bronze.

It was epic fare but, for once, the British were nowhere.

The only winner all week? Brian Cookson, the new UCI president.

Froome looked, if possible, even more pale than usual, as he conceded: "It is back to the drawing board for the Olympics."