Slovenia’s two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar pulled off a stunning solo ride to win the Strade Bianche in Tuscany.
The UAE Team Emirates rider attacked with 81km of the 215km race remaining.
He finished a record two minutes 44 seconds ahead of second-placed Toms Skujins in Siena, with Britain’s defending champion Tom Pidcock fourth.
Belgium’s world road race champion Lotte Kopecky won the women’s race as Britain’s Lizzie Deignan finished 27th.
Pogacar laid down a marker with victory in what was the 25-year-old’s first race of the season
The 2020 and 2021 Tour de France winner will attempt to reclaim that crown in 2024 from Jonas Vingegaard, who has won the yellow jersey for the past two years.
And he is aiming to complete the Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double for the first time.
Pogacar spent more than two hours on his own at the front of Saturday’s race, which included a distinctive 71km of dusty white gravel, after bursting clear of the field on the Monte Santa Maria.
“I knew that it was going to be long but I knew that when I had a gap that I just go to the end,” said the now two-time Strade Bianche winner, who claimed victory in similar circumstances in 2022 when he broke clear with 50km remaining.
Pogacar’s next big target is a first victory in Milan-San Remo on 16 March – the first of the season’s five classic one-day races known as the ‘Monuments’.