In hindsight, it can hardly be deemed a surprise that a man who began his season with a national title win on January 7 might find himself running on fumes by the time the UCI Road World Championships rolled around in mid-October.
Rohan Dennis (Australia), buoyed a fine run of Autumn results, lined out among the top echelon of favourites for the elite men's time trial on Wednesday, but shortly after leaving the start house in Lusail, he realised that the rainbow jersey would be beyond his reach on this occasion.
Nonetheless, Dennis stuck gamely to his task on the 40-kilometre circuit, and rallied to post the fourth quickest time at the second intermediate check, before dropping back to sixth place at the finish, 1:27 down on Tony Martin (Germany), who won the world title for the fourth time.
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"To be honest, I was good for probably six minutes. I could hold my power probably really until the end of the first circuit but once I got onto the main road, I was done," Dennis told Cyclingnews in the mixed zone afterwards. "I think it just wasn't my day. I think maybe my last bit of energy was used in the team time trial.
"Whatever pace you set at the start you had that to the finish. There was the risk of going out too hard. But I think 95 per cent of us blew a little bit in the second and half and whoever didn't was going to win and that was Tony."
Dennis was among the strongest performers for BMC as they placed second in the team time trial, but he was unable to replicate the same kind of power output here. That was a consequence, he felt, of the accumulated fatigue of a long season rather than the residual effects of Sunday's effort.
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