Brandon McNulty became the first American winner of the men’s road race world title in 33 years with a stunning victory in Montreal.
The 28-year-old put his hands on his head in disbelief as he crossed the line 13 seconds clear of the chasing pack, completing the gruelling 273.4km course in six hours and 17 minutes.
Australian Michael Matthews was second, with former winner Mathieu van der Poel, of the Netherlands, in third.
The last American winner of the race was Lance Armstrong in 1993.
“Until the last 800m I didn’t believe, I was so tired,” said McNulty.
“I’m at a loss for words. I knew something could happen but it would take a miracle and I guess today a miracle happened”.
He launched an attack going into the final 30km and was 50 seconds clear going into the last lap.
McNulty visibly began to tire on the final climb and his lead was cut to just 10 seconds, but the chasing pack were unable to reel him in.
Britain’s Tom Pidcock finished seventh, with Ireland’s Ben Healy 10th and Remco Evenepoel of Belgium in 12th place.
ByCybele Mayes-OstermanAssociated Press/Report for America
CHICAGO — A U.S. citizen was left bloodied and injured on the side of the road in a Chicago suburb after a confrontation with immigration enforcement agents who mistook him for a fugitive, according to local police and a resident who tried to help the man.
The man, whose identity was not disclosed, was taken away in an ambulance after the encounter on Sunday in Evanston, a city around 12 miles north of downtown Chicago. He told police his head, neck and teeth were injured, according to a news release from the Evanston Police Department.
A federal agent told officers who responded to calls reporting an altercation at just before 10 a.m. that morning that five agents in separate vehicles were looking for a fugitive with a Chicago address and a warrant for his arrest, according to the release. The agents mistook the man for the fugitive, the agent told police.
When the man refused to give his identification, the agents tried to handcuff him, the agent said. After realizing he was a U.S. citizen and not the person they were seeking, they released him.
One police officer saw blood on the agent’s hands, according to the release. The agent told police he was injured while trying to handcuff the man, and that they left the area immediately after because they feared protesters who had gathered would attack them, it noted.
Police have visited the man at the hospital and photographed his injuries, and are investigating the encounter.
Local authorities investigating
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss said in a post on X that the man was treated at St. Francis Hospital for minor injuries. The police department “continues to investigate the situation, and we will remain vigilant about federal activities,” he wrote.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had “encountered an individual who resembled the target” of a “targeted enforcement operation,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “The individual was given lawful commands but was not cooperative and refused to identify himself.”
The officers “left the scene without further incident” after the man identified himself, according to the statement. “When ICE officers offered the individual assistance, he refused.”
Illinois authorities condemn bloody encounter
The incident drew condemnation from Illinois officials as backlash grows against ICE’s presence in communities around the country. ICE announced a record number of arrests last month, with nearly 51,000 people arrested.
“I am disgusted and outraged by reports of what happened in my hometown of Evanston on Sunday,” Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky said in a statement.
Eyewitnesses tell AP what they saw
Ryan Garton, 56, told the Associated Press that he saw the agents pinning down the man, who was Black, on the side of the road as he was driving home. He pulled over to document what was happening on video.
One agent had his knee on the man’s back and was “beating up on him,” Garton told the AP. “I’m a citizen, leave me alone,” Garton said the man screamed as the agent pinned him down. Around five people stood nearby and yelled at the agent to stop.
Garton said he urged the agent to get off the man so he could inspect his injuries, and that the agent acknowledged that he was already aware the man was a U.S. citizen. When the agent stepped away, Garton saw bloodstains in the shape of handprints on the man’s shirt.
“His upper right eye socket and temple were swollen as if he had been punched” and his face was scraped “as if it had been ground into the sidewalk,” he said.
The man told Garton that he had been walking to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription when the agents stopped him.
Michael Lipson, the owner of a store across the street from where the incident occurred, said he saw the agents wrestle the man to the ground as he repeatedly yelled that he is a U.S. citizen. The man’s face looked “badly messed up,” Lipson told the AP.
Lipson said the agents checked cards and papers from the man’s wallet before leaving them scattered on the road. Lipson laid out his sweatshirt for the man to rest on while Garton inspected his injuries.
The same day, ICE agents shot and wounded a man in Austin, Texas, the latest in a string of shootings by federal immigration agents that have prompted growing backlash against the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration tactics.
At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration agents in President Trump’s second term, including a Colombian man shot dead in Maine in July by an agent with a history of violent behavior, and a Mexican man hit by a tractor trailer as he fled agents in Florida the same month. ICE agents fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, during the Trump administration’s siege of Minneapolis, named “Operation Metro Surge,” earlier this year.
Great Britain’s impressive rider line-up for cycling’s Road World Championships means the team have rarely stood a better chance of glory.
For the men, there is also the helpful factor of Slovenian superstar Tadej Pogacar being absent, after he suffered crash injuries during the Vuelta a Espana in August.
But at the same time a new generation of British cycling talent is rising, and GB riders could take the coveted winner’s rainbow jersey in the men’s and women’s road races in Montreal this weekend.
There are currently 49 British riders competing across the men’s and women’s world tours – more than ever before – and some of those will compete in this World Championship weekend.
The road race itself is much like a stage of the Tour de France, but in which riders compete in national squads, looking to out-think and out-muscle each other.
A lot of the British potential is thanks to the inspiration of British cycling’s golden period, which featured great success from the likes of Team Sky, Mark Cavendish and Lizzie Deignan across the past 15 years.
Deignan won the road race in 2015, while Cavendish triumphed in 2011.
In total, British riders have won the elite road races seven times, including Tom Simpson (1965), Beryl Burton (1960 & 1967), Mandy Jones (1982) and Nicole Cooke (2008).
Amid an unpredictable performance landscape for the women, Britain’s best young female riders have a chance to infiltrate the once-dominant Dutch contingent.
Tour de France Femmes winner Demi Vollering remains the sport’s best overall, but Briton Zoe Backstedt’s brilliant second place in Sunday’s Worlds time trial was her first shot at the elite level.
She will be involved in Saturday’s women’s road race, and Olympic mountain bike gold medallist and Tour de France stage winner Tom Pidcock will race for the men on Sunday.
“You need a lot of faith in your team to be present at the front,” Backstedt told BBC Sport. “You need to talk, hear, see and feel each other to know they are there, especially as there’s no team radio.
“Obviously it’s about knowing the big names to follow. If Demi or Kasia [Niewiadoma] go off the front, you know it’s a dangerous move and you need to be there.
“But we’ve got a super strong team, and if any one of us was with them, we all could stand have a chance.”
The women’s road race is 180.4km long, which includes eight laps of Montreal, and the men’s 273.2km race incorporates 12 circuits.
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I wasn’t sure what to expect from an autumn trip to Finland, my first ever to the country, but spending an afternoon sprawled on a deck chair beneath blazing blue skies certainly wasn’t part of it. After a morning walking beneath the leafy canopy at the Mustila Arboretum – the oldest, most extensive botanical garden in the country – and a lunchtime wine-tasting (more of which later), my friend Sara and I pitched up at the Sahanlahti resort, deep in the Finnish Lakeland, only to find sun-drenched scenery that felt far more Mediterranean than Nordic.
Sahanlahti was the second stop on a mid-September road trip from Helsinki to the shores of Lake Saimaa; a journey in search of ruska, the spectacular autumn colours that blaze for a few short weeks before the long Finnish winter sets in. However, on our opening drive east from the airport to the Radalla resort, set on Lake Urajärvi, most of the thousands of trees we drove past were resolutely green, with just the very tips of the leaves tinged with auburn, like a foliage balayage.
Enjoying the peace at Sahanlahti resort on Lake Saimaa. Photograph: Annabelle Thorpe
“You’re too early,” the waitress told us, cheerfully, after we had checked in to our chic waterfront cabins, and were tucking into hefty plates of crispy garlic chicken, scattered with freshly picked chanterelles, in Radalla’s quiet dining room. “But you might get some sun tomorrow.” Later, walking back to our cabins through thick drizzle, we agreed she was most probably just being kind.
The Radalla resort is just one of dozens of lakeside hotels scattered across southern Finland – many with self-catering cabins, sauna complexes and gleaming metal steps that lead from wooden piers down into the chilly waters of the lake. The grey drizzle we awoke to made a dip less than appealing, and instead we decided to set off for our next stop, taking in the arboretum en route before finding a place for lunch.
Driving in southern Finland turned out to be quite different from other countries. Most settlements fringe the lakesides, so they tend to be tucked away down side roads leading off from the main highway. Instead, trees – those resolutely green trees – rolled past us for mile after mile, until slowly the fields began to melt into lakes, one after another, the road snaking alongside the blue-grey waters, or stitching together small islets that lay scattered between them.
Googling somewhere for lunch, Sara came across the Ollinmäki winery, an unexpected find in a country that grows absolutely no grapes. Instead, berry wines are hugely popular, and once settled in at our table, we were persuaded to try a flight of six, accompanied by a bowl of hearty elk soup (which tasted considerably better than it looked) and a leaf salad with local cheese. One wine, the white currant and berry Myllärin Matti was particularly delicious, with the tang of a crisp sauvignon – although I wouldn’t want to find out what a Finnish hangover feels like.
From the winery it was an easy drive to Sahanlahti, by which time the weather had cleared and pin-sharp blue skies gleamed above the shores of Lake Saimaa. The main house – painted butterscotch-yellow and dating back to the mid-18th century, when the owners presided over the local sawmill – had a languidly old-fashioned air, but dinner at the Koskivahti restaurant was anything but: rich mushroom soup, slivers of goose confit with lingonberry sauce, wafer-thin beetroot carpaccio with tangy goat’s cheese.
Annabelle Thorpe and friend foraging for wild mushrooms. Photograph: Annabelle Thorpe
It might have been too early for the leaves to turn, but we had arrived right in the middle of harvest season, when heading out into the fields and islands to pick wild mushrooms and berries (of which there are 35 different varieties) is practically a national sport. We had barely set down our bags at our final stop, Järvisydän resort, before we were whizzing out across Saimaa on a small motor boat, baskets tucked between our feet, to hunt for chanterelles and look for rare ringed seals and ospreys.
The sky was flawlessly blue as we whipped across the water, disembarking first to pick the mushrooms – slashes of bright yellow among the green undergrowth. We were guided in our harvesting by Sebastian, the 12th generation of the Heiskanen family to be running Järvisydän. “Back in 1654,” he told us, “my family were given a portion of land by the Russian tsar, to build a tavern on the route between St Petersburg and Helsinki.” More than 350 years later, the tavern has morphed into a 100-room resort, offering everything from starkly modern glass-walled cabins, high in the forest, to hexagonal log houses with bedrooms set off a central, fire-lit atrium, and camping pods.
It’s an extraordinary place: everything – from the vast reception, dwarfed by a replica Viking longship hull hung above reception, to the restaurants, bar and the Hobbit-like spa – is built entirely from local stone and timber. A visit to the spa seemed the perfect way to warm up after our chilly boat trip, with six different saunas to dip into – although the “sunken log” sauna, where the temperature reached 70C, gave me some sense of how an ice-cream might feel if left out in the sun.
Of the three resorts we visited, Järvisydän was the standout – for its history, for the spectacular scenery of Lake Saimaa that surrounds it, for the delicious mushroom soup and for the long, sunlit walk we took on our final afternoon, through the dense pine forest, where red squirrels skittered around in the branches above. It was a wrench to leave on our last morning, but as we sped back along quiet roads to Helsinki, we agreed Finland had – in spite of our foliage fail – outstripped our expectations. It was more beautiful, more peaceful, more sunkissed than we could ever have imagined.
Ruska (the vibrant colours of autumn foliage) begins in the north of the country in early to mid-September, reaching the Lake Saimaa region in the south by early October.
The trip was provided by Discover the World. A four-night bespoke self-drive trip staying at Radalla, Sahanlahti and Järvisydän resorts starts at £794pp, including B&B and car hire, but not flights.
A vital highway weakened by Nepal’s floodwaters has collapsed four days after the catastrophic glacial outburst. The road formed a landslide into the Trishuli river which has swelled after heavy rain.
