Southland's Corbin Strong has finished 49th in a brutal elite men's road race at the UCI Road World Championships in Montreal, where American Brandon McNulty upset the favourites with a solo win.

The 273.4km race on Sunday (Monday morning New Zealand time) started at Quartier DIX30 in Brossard, crossed the Samuel De Champlain Bridge into Montreal and finished with 12 laps of a 13.4km circuit around Mount Royal.

Every lap took in the 2.3km Camillien-Houde climb, which averages 6.2 per cent, and the Chemin de la Polytechnique, where the gradient tips past 11 per cent. By the finish on Avenue du Parc the riders had climbed 3803 metres.

McNulty crossed the line alone in 6h 17m 04s, 13 seconds ahead of Australia's Michael Matthews, with Mathieu van der Poel of the Netherlands third in the same time. It was the first elite men's road race world title for the United States since 1993.

Strong came home about 10 minutes behind the winner in a race that shredded the field over more than six hours.

The Invercargill rider was part of a six-man New Zealand team that also included Ben Oliver, George Bennett, Joshua Kench, Laurence Pithie and Finn Fisher-Black.

Paying their own way

The New Zealanders lined up without financial support from Cycling New Zealand. Before the race Fisher-Black told Cycling News that "we don't get funding from Cycling New Zealand; we all pay to be there", although he said the group were good mates who would look after each other in the final.

Belgium's Remco Evenepoel, who won both the time trial and the road race at the Paris Olympics, started as the man to beat after taking out the time trial in Canada earlier in the week.

Among the major one-day races on the calendar, only Milano-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders are longer than Sunday's course.

Teenager's debut

Strong was not the only Southlander racing in Montreal. Benson Boys, 16, rode the junior men's road race on Friday in his first world championships and finished about six minutes behind the Spanish winner, Benjamin Noval.

Strong, a former world champion in the points race on the track, has spent recent seasons racing on the road in Europe and remains one of the region's highest-profile professional athletes.

Both he and Boys were nominated at this year's ILT Southland Murihiku Sports Awards, Strong in the senior sportsperson category and Boys among the junior finalists.