Masterful Rui Costa claims rainbow jersey after freakish day in Florence for the Irish

That's how he rolls: Rui Costa wins big for Portugal on a day when the Irish enjoyed no luck in Florence.

Rui Costa of Portugal is on top of the world after claiming victory in the inhuman war of attrition that was the elite men’s road race at the World Championships in Tuscany today, Sunday.

On a deeply unpleasant day for the Irish where diabolical weather conditions sparked utter carnage, Costa was able to outgun Spain’s Joaquim Rodriguez in a two-man sprint for the rainbow jersey.

Costa was distanced by Rodriguez and home favourite Vincenzo Nibali on the penultimate ascent of the race, but thereafter he played a shrewd tactical game.

With Alejandro Valverde (Spain) for company, the new World Champion managed to get back to the leaders on the downhill and refused to do any chasing as Rodriguez repeatedly dashed away.

Instead it was Nibali who did all the work until Costa finally hared off in pursuit of Rodriguez with about 1.5 kilometres to go. The Spaniard’s advantage melted away in an unbearably slow fashion, but when eventually he was caught you sensed that the Katusha rider knew the game was up.

Rodriguez swivelled his head to desperately jabber something at his rival, but Costa would not be cowed and it was the Portuguese who opened up the sprint first. He went a tad early perhaps, but the win was all that mattered as the Movistar man managed to hold off his companion and cross the line in triumph.

The canny victory caps a successful 2013 season for the Portuguese rider, who was a powerful winner of two stages at the Tour de France and the overall title at the Tour de Suisse. On this most torturous of days, he has proved himself to be one of the hardest men in the modern peloton. Of 208 starters, just 61 would finish the race.

Costa’s assault on the rainbow jersey would commence with a 106.6-kilometre trek from Lucca to Florence, followed by ten laps of a now-familiar 16.6 kilometre circuit.

First the riders would scale the 4.4-kilometre Fiesole ascent, before plunging down to the foot of the severe, 600-metre Via Salviati. After that climb, it would be a mostly downhill five-kilometre ride to the finish.

In the early kilometres, Rafaa Chtioui of Tunisia was the first man to go clear. Soon he would joined by the Pole Bartosz Huzarski, before Matthias Brandle (Austria), Jan Barta (Czech Republic) and 20-year-old Yonder Godoy (Venezuela) rode across to make it a breakaway quintet .

The leaders worked well together in the foul conditions, and they arrived at the circuit about eight minutes clear of a pack that contained the Irish quartet of Roche, Martin, Brammeier and Bennett.

Then all hell broke loose.

With Nibali’s Italian teammates frenetically drilling the bunch along, crash after crash would ensue as the treacherous conditions sparked mayhem. The slippery descents were absolutely lethal, with Roche hitting the tarmac on a dangerous downhill section that lurked at the end of the circuit. A lap later, the unfortunate Martin would come to grief in almost exactly the same spot.

But it was not just the Irish who were in dire straits. The entire eight-man British team had pulled out long before the serious battle for the gold medal got underway, and nothing conveyed the cruelty of the weather conditions quite like the scary visage of a blue-lipped, bloodshot-eyed Geraint Thomas, who was speaking to television after his abandonment.

Chris Horner (USA) and Cadel Evans (Australia) were among the other big names to depart proceedings early on, but many of the pre-race favourites were still safely ensconced in a peloton of about 40 riders when the most critical action began.

With a distanced Vincenzo Nibali fighting to keep his hopes alive after crashing near the end of the eighth lap, the final two laps got underway with Bartosz Huzarski (Poland) and Giovanni Visconti (Italy) in the lead. The teak-tough Pole was the last of the day’s initial breakaway to survive, his companion having bridged across from a small chasing group not long beforehand.

By now the weather had started to improve, and former Paris-Roubaix winner Johan Van Summeren (Belgium) led a thinned-out peloton through the finish line 1:07 later with his team leader Philippe Gilbert still present and correct in the bunch.

The Colombian Darwin Atapuma took up the charge on the Fiesole, and this meant that Huzarski and Visconti would soon be caught. Nibali had managed to re-establish contact with the help of a cheeky little tow from his team car, and despite a little dig from France’s Romain Bardet on the penultimate scaling of the Via Salviati the Italian had time to recuperate before the critical final lap.

Up to now the Danish squad had been largely anonymous, but a little way up the final climb of the Fiesole Chris Anker Sorensen was suddenly setting a hot pace in that ungainly and unmistakeable style.

His plan was to assist Jakob Fuglsang, but the Danish leader’s chances would expire when Nibali’s domestique Michele Scarponi surged off the front in an attempt to force the issue. Joaquim Rodriguez bridged the gap and the punchy Spaniard pushed on with strongmen like Peter Sagan (Slovakia) and Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland) in big trouble.

Nibali and Rodriguez traded attacks as the summit neared, and together they led the way onto the penultimate downhill section. Valverde, Costa and Rigoberto Uran (Colombia) were pushing hard to get back on, but only two would make it after the Colombian came a cropper by crashing in spectacular fashion. Thankfully, he did not appear to be seriously hurt.