Demare, Petit stun espoir field with French 1-2

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France scored an impressive one-two in the men's under 23 road race at the UCI World Championships in Copenhagen as Arnaud Démare outsprinted his teammate Adrien Petit, with Andy Fenn (Great Britain) coming home in third.

Démare and Petit's pitch-perfect performance on the testing rise to the finish will have provided a further tonic for French cycling after a season in which it has already shown significant signs of a return to the rudest of health.

At the end of an afternoon of aggressive racing that ultimately failed to break up the peloton, Australia looked set to control affairs on the run-in to the finish. Instead, their fast man Michael Hepburn was unable to make an impact in the finale, and it was Andy Fenn who went first in the sprint, careering off the wheel of his teammate Luke Rowe.

The Briton may well rue showing his hand so soon, however, as on the opposite side of the road, Petit was beating a path for Démare. As Fenn began to fade, Petit and Démare came around him, and with 150 metres to go, Démare ripped past his lead-out and roared clear to take an emphatic victory.

Such was the French duo's dominance that they were both able to hold off Fenn and they crossed the line with their arms aloft. Behind Fenn, Rudger Selig (Germany) came home in fourth, ahead of Marco Haller (Austria).

"I'm really happy," said Démare, who will ride for FDJ next season. "The false flat to the line was very hard, but I saw with 100 metres to go that I was going to win. Then when I saw that we were going to get the one-two, well, that was an extra satisfaction."

Petit explained that he had long been earmarked as the man to lead out Démare in the finale. A stagiare with Cofidis in the second half of this season, he raced the Worlds circuit at the Tour of Denmark in August.

"The last stage was on this circuit, and I saw that it was a finish that suited me," he said. "I was selected to be Arnaud's lead-out man. We rode together at the Tour de Moselle recently, and then we trained together on the course in the last couple of days."

The third-place Fenn wasn't sure if the glass was half-full or half-empty at the end of the race, but admitted that his French rivals had gauged the finale better than anyone.

"I'm obviously happy, because the team deserved a medal, but I'm also disappointed not to get the win," he said. "They [Démare and Petit] got it spot on," he said. "It was a hard finish to judge, but they got it right."

Durbridge shuts down attacks on final lap

As had been widely anticipated, the flat circuit invited a high-speed opening to the afternoon's racing. The first attack to gain any significant traction came from the Brazilian Carlos Alexandre Manarelli at the end of lap one, and after he stretched out a sizeable advantage, Gianluca Leonardi (Italy) put in an impressive solo effort to bridge the gap two laps later.

Without a recognised sprinter in their line up, the Italians had promised an aggressive showing on the eve of the race and Leonardi held up their end of the bargain by propelling the break to a lead that approached four minutes with 70km raced.

While the bunch behind was initially disorganised, the repeated fragmenting and reforming that took place on the front of the peloton eventually drove up the pace sufficiently to begin to make significant inroads into Leonardi and Manarelli's lead, and with 50km to race, the margin had been shaved to just over a minute.

As the early escapees' advantage continued to dwindle, Philip Lavery (Ireland) and Zico Waeytens (Belgium) were among the riders who attempted to jump across. Though their move was quickly snuffed out, their attack did mark the commencement of real hostilities and signalled the beginning of the end for Manarelli and Leonardi's rally off the front.

Midway through the third last lap, the pair were swallowed up by the peloton, but no sooner was their capture complete than Leonardi's teammate Eugenio Alafaci was on the offensive, joined soon afterwards by Louis Meintjes (South Africa) and Christopher Juul Jensen (Denmark). That trio soon swelled to a sextet when the stylish Natnael Berhane (Eritrea) shut the gap and brought Philip Lindau (Sweden) and Maxat Azazbayev (Kazakhstan) across with him.

Berhane's fluidity and Alafaci's power were complementing each other well at this point, and thanks largely to their efforts, the break had 34 seconds in hand as they began the penultimate lap. However, as Belgium and Australia gradually stirred themselves into action at the front end of the peloton, it soon became apparent that their foray off the front would have a limited shelf life.

And so it came to pass. The six were engulfed by the peloton as they took the bell for the final lap, and after plucky moves from Carlos Betancur (Colombia) and Nicola Boem (Italy) were brought to heel, world time trial champion Luke Durbridge (Australia) took over at the front of the peloton in a bid to police affairs for Michael Hepburn.

As though it were needed after his rampant performance on Monday, Durbridge give another reminder of his potential as a rouleur when he bossed the front end of the peloton and prevented anybody from jumping clear at the business end of the final lap. When he swung over, however, the Australian train began to unravel, as Britain's Luke Rowe forced his way in with dangerman Fenn on his wheel.

Worse was to follow as Australian hope Michael Hepburn was unable to match the pace on the uphill kick to the line, and ultimately it was the French duo of Démare and Petit who stole the show. The momentum behind French cycling's upturn in fortunes gathers apace.

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