Tao Geoghegan Hart's and Jai Hindley's names would have been on nobody's list of favourites for this year's Giro d'Italia before the race began three weeks ago but today they finished 1st and 2nd overall after the final stage into Milan.
That an unlikely winner - who never once wore the race leader's jersey on the road - was crowned today is perhaps apt in a year that has seen Grand Tours overlap and the spring classics held in autumn.
The new Giro champion and Britain's second rider, after Chris Froome, to win the Italian Grand Tour, Geoghegan Hart, went into the race as a domestique to work for his Ineos Grenadiers leader Geraint Thomas.
However, when Thomas crashed and had to abandon after just three days, 25-year-old Londoner Geoghegan Hart was given a freer hand, but still nobody would have tipped him for outright victory.
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However, in what has been a most unusual season for pro cycling, the British rider was literally pulled into a race-winning position by team mate Rohan Dennis on the final two mountain stages; last Thursday on the Stelvio and yesterday on Sestriere.
In the process, Dennis also eliminated the Wilco Kelderman, Team Sunweb's leader who briefly held the maglia rosa. Kelderman's team mate Jai Hindley proved better able to sit on Dennis's wheel as he was puling Geoghegan Hart along.
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And after Dennis dragged Geoghegan Hart and Hindley away from all of the other riders in the race during the final two days in the mountains, they went into today's test equal on time at the head of the general classification, with Hindley taking the pink jersey into the TT.
Today in that final stage TT, some 15.7km into Milan, Geoghegan Hart ran out the winner as he beat Hindley by 39 seconds; Hindley taking 2nd overall and Kelderman 3rd.
It was a race that saw the withdrawal due to Covid-19 of two teams that might have won the overall - Mitchelton Scott and Jumbo Visma - while Thomas also crashed out and time finally caught up with Vincenzo Nibali (Trek Segafredo).
And with a layer of top riders taken out of the race, younger men stepped up to take their place, just as 22-year-old Tadej Pogačar (UAE-Team Emirates) did at the Tour de France when Primoz Roglic (Jumbo Visma) faltered in the final TT and Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) was forced out due to injury.
Pogačar is odds on to continue to win on the biggest stage. Whether Geoghegan Hart and Hindley - who rode very well but benefited significantly from the misfortune of others on this Giro - will hit these heights again in the years ahead remains to be seen.
However, cycling is a game where riders must have the nerve and the legs to their chances when they come, and Geoghegan Hart passed those two tests with flying colours during the final week in Italy.
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