In Doha this weekend, the organisers of the World Athletics Championships had to start the marathon at midnight to avoid the punishing daytime heat. More than 4,000 miles away in Yorkshire, the UCI, cycling’s governing body, was having its own weather woes at its annual Road World Championships.

UCI is an organisation so unyielding that it dictates how high a rider’s socks can be. But on Sunday it accepted that Yorkshire’s relentless rain had won and shortened the men’s road race from 281km to a mere 261km (162 miles).

It didn’t make the race any easier: by the time the Danish rider Mads Pedersen took the gold after six-and-a-half hours on the saddle, 151 riders had given up, including 2018 Welsh Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas and the 2018 world champion, Alejandro Valverde. Only 46 riders finished the course.

Cycling World Championships 2019: Mads Pedersen wins men's elite road race – as it happened Read more

No one complained that the truncated course meant they missed out on Buttertubs Pass or Grinton Moor, two tough climbs featured in the 2014 Tour de France which included some English legs. They are textbook examples of Yorkshire parsimony, cementing the county’s reputation for having some of the world’s hardest cycling terrain: why waste Tarmac on namby-pamby switchbacks if you can save a bit of cash routing a road straight on up?

Both would have been lethal on Sunday. The championships had already seen a few very close calls during an extremely soggy week. Bike racing has many inherent dangers but drowning isn’t usually one of them. Yet, during the under-23 men’s time trial, Johan Price-Pejtersen, another Dane, went for an unscheduled swim after hitting a gigantic puddle at 35pmh. Stefan Bissegger, a Swiss, who crashed just three miles in, complained afterwards that the race should have been cancelled. “It was like riding into a lake. I lost control and just plunged into the water, like diving into a bathtub,” he said.

On Sunday morning, the elite men set off late from Leeds, faces as hard and grey as the limestone cliffs of Kilnsey Crag, which they waded past after 30 miles. Optimistic domestic spectators hoped the conditions would favour British riders who are used to a soaking – perhaps Ben Swift, a Yorkshireman who came fifth in the 2017 world championships, or Ian Stannard, who spends far more time training in the Peak District than Monaco or Mallorca.

But when it came to the final sprint in Harrogate, the Britons were nowhere to be seen, with Stannard climbing off his bike before the finish. It was 23-year-old Pedersen who beat the more experienced Italian Matteo Trentin on the line, with Londoner Tao Geoghegan Hart the first Briton to complete the course, two minutes and 20 seconds later. Swift was a further four minutes behind, saying afterwards that it was really tough – even by Yorkshire standards. “It was quite windy at times and there was a lot of big, deep puddles out there which made it more difficult,” he said, hollow-eyed and shivering.

All day in Harrogate it had been siling it down, to use the local vernacular. Locals were split on whether hosting the world championships had been an honour or a burden. Bits of Harrogate were resembling a “ghost town” for much of the week, the local Chamber of Commerce told the Harrogate Advertiser, suggesting there should be some form of compensation for lost trade.

In Prey Four, an independent clothing boutique on Parliament Street, the home straight for all of the big races, owner Paul Lown watched the race on a laptop in an empty shop. Takings had been down by half some days during the championships, he said, though he was pleased to sell some gear to the mother of Belgian Remco Evenepoel, who won silver in the time trial.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Danish cyclist Mads Pedersen crossing the finishing line in the Road World Championships 2019. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

It had been a fun week but not a lucrative one, Lown said: “We decided to stay open while quite a lot of other businesses shut up shop for the week … It was the council who wanted the races here so perhaps they could give us a month’s free business rates.”

In Otley, which was visited by both the men and women’s elite races on the weekend, every pub had adopted a different nation and changed their name accordingly. The Black Horse Hotel, adorned with Italian flags, became Il Cavallo Nero; The Old Cock had transformed into Le Coq Âgé. The town was given a special treat during the sunny women’s race on Saturday, when the peloton allowed local darling Lizzie Deignan to ride off the front, past the church where she got married, her old school and then her parents’ house.

She failed to win her second rainbow jersey, but said she loved racing on home roads. “It was a day I will remember forever,” she said afterwards. For Geraint Thomas and the other British men, their sodden Yorkshire world championship attempts may well be one they would rather forget.