The British riders were perhaps the biggest disappointments in yesterday’s race for the world championship. When the chips were down and the going got tough, the British squad, including the last two winners of the Tour de France, Sir Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, were nowhere in sight, which left their coach Rod Ellingworth less than impressed with his two stars.

"Having a British jersey on their backs, they should be very disappointed," Ellingworth, who masterminded Mark Cavendish's ride into the rainbow jersey in 2011, told The Guardian. "We should be very disappointed with that as a team and with the approach to the race. I don't think the lads' attitude was where it needed to be. Luke Rowe and Cavendish were OK, average, the other guys were below average.”

Prior to the race, both Froome and Wiggins had stated that they felt in great shape and were ready to do battle on Sunday. Wiggins even put action behind his words when he took silver in the individual time trial earlier in the week. Yet the 2012 Tour de France winner was swift to abandon the race without ever having put his stamp on the events. The same goes for Chris Froome, who, like Wiggins, seems to take a serious disliking to cold and wet circumstances, again leaving Ellingworth anything but awestruck.

"Chris said he struggled with the cold and rain but it's the same for everyone. It's never going to be his strong point when the weather's like that but that's what makes the worlds the race it is. I'm sure Brad will be disappointed with his performance. It's not [that] he hasn't got the form. He went out the back on [the early climb of] San Baronto. The writing was on the wall then, to be honest."

For Wiggins there must have been a sense of deja-vu as he almost embarrassingly went out the backdoor in conditions reminiscent of this year’s Giro d’Italia when Wiggins clearly suffered and paled into obscurity before abandoning, a far cry from the all-conquering rider of 2012.

Froome, predictably, cited the unfavourable weather conditions when explaining his early exit.

"There were crashes everywhere, it hasn't let up all day, it's been raining solidly and all the drains were flooding. At some points in the road we were actually a foot deep in water and that was causing the crashes, people trying to move up on the side and getting stuck in the gutters and things. After three laps [of the circuit], the splits started happening, I looked around and saw I didn't have any team-mates with me and thought this isn't going to happen today," Froome said. “When I saw the splits already starting to open, it was clear to me it was game over for the day."

None of the eight-man British team managed to finish in conditions that are almost second nature to a lot of riders but are evidently at odds with the two biggest names of British cycling.