Spain's Oscar Freire Gomez yesterday won the World Championship road race in Verona, Italy. The Spaniard caught his nine main rivals off guard as they eyed each other in the finishing straight of the 260kms championship.

He finished four seconds clear as a jostling sprint behind ended in Marcus Zberg of Switzerland snatching silver with Frenchman Jean-Cyril Robin taking the bronze.

In contrast to last year when Mark Scanlon took the world junior championship there was only one Irish finisher on Saturday morning at Verona and Denis Lynch was well down the list in 69th place. He led in a group 15 minutes and 54 seconds behind Damiano Cunego of Italy who beat Rouslan Kaioumov (Russia) by five seconds for the title at the end of the 130 kilometres.