Cycling Road World Championships 2019: men's time trial – live!

As always in a time trial, most of the stronger riders and genuine contenders will be going out last. The wind is light, between 5 and 10km/h, which the riders will be grateful for. These guys have certainly got a better day than yesterday’s riders.

Eddie Dunbar of Team INEOS rolls down the start ramp. I’ll bring you a time check for Navardauskas when he passes the 17km mark.

Weather conditions look much, much better than yesterday. The roads have dried out and although it’s a far cry from that famous sun-drenched Grand Départ in Yorkshire in 2014, there are some patches of bright sky among the clouds, if not actual sunshine.

Here we go: Navardauskas rolls down the ramp in Northallerton. The ‘Race of Truth’ has begun.

Champion Rohan Dennis has not raced since walking out of the Tour de France with Team Bahrain Merida. He has not been happy with the equipment at his new team, apparently, after signing from the now defunct BMC Racing Team for this season. The wheels and skinsuits have been an issue. Given his lack of recent racing it is difficult to say how he’ll go today. It’s certainly an opportunity for his rivals to test him.

Who are the other riders to look out for today? Remco Evenepoel is certainly one. The 19-year-old Belgian prodigy has enjoyed a dream start to his pro career after signing for Deceuninck – Quick Step. The most eye-catching result has been his victory at the Clásica San Sebastián, a prestigious one-day race.

Stefan Küng, from Switzerland, is one of the most powerful riders in the peloton and already boasts nine top-10 finishes in ITTs this season.

Yves Lampaert could also be one to watch. He’s generates enormous power for a relatively small rider and this up-and-down course may suit him well.

We are less than 20 minutes away from the start of today’s race. Lithuanian Navardauskas, the first rider to start today, has an interesting history. He was the rider that replaced David Millar at the 2014 Tour de France, after Garmin-Sharp managers decided Millar didn’t have the necessary form. The Lithuanian went on to win Stage 19 with a brilliant solo attack, announcing himself on the global stage and justifying his selection. He then signed for Team Bahrain Merida, where a heart condition kept him out of racing for a year in 2017. Last season the 31-year-old switched to Delko-Marseille Provence. He won the national road race title in Lithuania in June. It will be interesting to see how he goes today.

A UCI video of that wet and wild day yesterday:

There was plenty of criticism from riders yesterday aimed at the UCI. Some riders insisted the races should have been called off – especially the men’s under-23 race in the morning, when the riders were having to ride around, or in some cases into, massive puddles of standing water on the road. Thankfully, we should avoid such controversy today, even if the conditions will be far from perfect in sodden Yorkshire.

In the womens’ individual time trial yesterday, Chloe Dygert Owen of the USA produced what some said was an almost-perfect time trial, beating her closest rival Anna Van der Breggen by 1’32”. Catch up on the action with William Fotheringham’s report:

Today’s course is 54km long, starting in Northallerton and ending in Harrogate.

There are timing points after 17km and 38km. Between those timing points are the two significant climbs on the route: Gate Bridge Road (1.1km, average 4.9% gradient) and a second climb of 0.7km (average gradient of 7%).

The route begins heading in a south-westerly direction out of Northallerton. There is a short, steep ramp as the road runs towards Masham, followed by a fast and flat section heading into Risplith. After that, the route undulates all the way to Harrogate, including those two climbs.

The way each rider paces their effort will be crucial to the final result. Go out too hard and fast on a course that is this long and demanding, and you will leave yourself short towards the end. All the up-and-down along the route means it should suit the lighter riders, like Dennis and Roglic.

Ramunas Navardauskas of Lithuania will be the first rider down the start ramp at 13.18 BST.

Here is how the podium looked last year. Campanaerts, the current Hour Record holder, will be up against Dennis again today, but Dutchman Dumoulin is absent and not expected to return to racing this season. He suffered a bad knee injury during the Giro d’Italia in May, missing the Tour de France as a result.

Preamble

Greetings, and welcome to our live coverage of the mens’ individual time trial at the 2019 Cycling Road World Championships. In Yorkshire this afternoon, Australia’s Rohan Dennis will defend the world title he won in Innsbruck last year. It’s a 54km course including two significant climbs, which the fastest riders will complete in about an hour. Yes, that means they will average over 50km/h, an astonishing speed.

There are a few notable absentees – Tom Dumoulin, Chris Froome, and Geraint Thomas among them. But Slovenian Vuelta a España champion Primoz Roglic, Victor Campanaerts of Belgium and ‘Der Panzerwagen’ Tony Martin are among the riders with a realistic chance of stopping Dennis retaining his rainbow stripes.

Mercifully, the weather looks a lot better today than it did yesterday. It’s overcast, but the rain is expected to hold off. A closer look at the course is coming right up. Here is the kind of thing competitors were dealing with yesterday in sunny Yorkshire: