"At the beginning it's 10 minutes of survival where you try to manage your effort, to save energy, to hurt the others if necessary. And the last 3 minutes is waiting for the final attack. I like to build the speed before it comes to a sprint finish. And then when everyone is already tired, to just go that extra little bit. And this is where I really think the Bicarb can help you — to get that little bit of extra power."

“Before the start I will do 2 or 3 laps on the course. Because the racing is straight from the gun you really need to know how the course looks and if it’s different from the week before. Maybe ride into some corners at race speed, just to get a good feeling. It's important to know how fast you can approach into a corner and, for example, how early can you step on the pedals again.”

“Before the start I will do 2 or 3 laps on the course. Because the racing is straight from the gun you really need to know how the course looks and if it’s different from the week before. Maybe ride into some corners at race speed, just to get a good feeling. It's important to know how fast you can approach into a corner and, for example, how early can you step on the pedals again.”

"For sure I was super angry. More angry than maybe I should have been. But you know how you are — with the adrenaline and everything. I just asked, ‘Why did you do that? If you can't beat me on the climb, why do that in the very last corner? Especially when we still had the sprint finish where you could have shown your strength’. It was obvious that if two people go into this corner right next to each other then one will definitely crash. But I can understand — he sees an opportunity and he goes for it.”

"Right now I feel like I have jetlag, even though it's only an hour difference. It's always the same with the Worlds — you peak physically, but also mentally. And then as the pressure falls off afterwards it's normal to feel like this."

It’s not always in your hands. Luca raced for 20 minutes at an average normalised power of nearly 500 watts. Third place into the last corner and in sight of the finish — a medal almost within reach. Cue an ambitious divebomb from Tom Pidcock that brought the two riders together in a loose, off-camber turn. And Luca went down.