“Wow, what a day. It’s one I’ll never forget. I don’t think anyone who rode will either,” Millar told Cyclingnews after washing off the mud on the Garmin team bus.

“I actually enjoy it when it’s like this. I think this is what racing is all about. In a way, the worse the conditions, the better I seem to go. In the end it was just mano-a-mano and it was actually a lot of fun.”

“The roads round here are called strade bianche but they weren’t white today. After just two kilometres of racing on them I looked at the guy next and thought’ ‘Is that what I look like?’ We were like mud men.”

“I’m two or three kilograms over my ideal climbing weight. That is usually a handicap but I think it helped me in the cold and wet conditions,” he told Cyclingnews.

“When everyone cracked on the last climb, I was still okay but then I bottled it on the last descent. After all I’d got through I was scared of crashing.”

“I told myself there was no way I was going to crash and throw it all away in the last few kilometres so I tip-toed it on the last descent.”