Seventy-five riders competed today. The first of these was Israeli Oleg Sergeev, who posted a 58:05. Victor Okishev (Kazakhstan) took the lead from Sergeev, but Yves Lampaert (Belgium) set the first standard of sorts with a 52:27.

Lampaert’s time stood for a bit more than a quarter of an hour. At that point, Stefan Kueng (Switzerland) powered home to take the lead with a 51:36, a time that would be the day’s sixth best. Lawson Craddock (United States) then took the lead by 0:05 despite crashing. The American would finish fifth on the day.

Craddock remained in the lead for nearly an hour. Paillot then obliterated Craddock’s time with a 50:02. Howson and Hansen were still on the course.

Hansen led by less than a second at the 9.5-km checkpoint, but Howson poured on the coal to take the lead at the second time check at 28 km. The Aussie powered away from the Dane to win hands down. Hansen was second at 28 km, but he tired in the final km and settled for third.

Howson, who has signed a multiyear deal with Team GreenEdge starting in 2014, said that the world championship was one of his goals for the season. "At the start of the season I won the Australian and Oceania titles and so set myself the goal of taking all three,” he said. ”This has been a major focus of mine all year, so I'm so happy to have done it."

"I always try and maintain a constant pace from start to the finish. I focus on what I can do best. I was told I was doing a good ride, and I think this is one of the best rides I've ever done. I'm happy about that."

Howson will ride with Australia’s squad in Friday’s road race. How will he fare? Check in www.roadcycling.com and find out!

Follow Roadcycling.com on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and subscribe to the premium version of our Training Tracker service p/b TrainingPeaks, which lets you track and analyze your training and nutrition using the exact same tools as pro riders on WorldTour teams such as Sky, Saxo-Tinkoff and GreenEdge. Login to your Training Tracker account from all pages here on Roadcycling.com while you're here to check out the latest news from the pro road cycling scene - how very convenient.