The British national road race championship has often proved a pitfall for Europe-based professionals and Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins, David Millar and company were upstaged by Kristian House of the British-based Rapha-Condor squad. They are a full-time outfit sponsored by a cycle clothing company and London's leading bike shop but even so their entire annual budget would not approach the six-figure salary of the four-times Tour de France stage winner Cavendish.

After Cavendish crossed the line to take sixth, he asked onlookers who had won and was told it was House, whose biggest previous win was the FBD Ras Tour of ­Ireland. "What?" shouted Cavendish, swerving and almost falling off his bike in surprise. Later he said hefelt House had not done his share of work in the race. "It's never nice when the winner is sat on for the whole day. He said, 'I'm tired, I'm tired' but he was able to go with everything."

Cavendish has rightly earned a reputation for wearing his heart on his sleeve but his words were ill-considered given that he had not witnessed the final miles. House had been part of a lead quartet which sprinted away from the rest of an elite 10-rider lead group with five laps remaining of a four-and-a-half-mile finishing circuit around the town, and he did not seem to be stinting in his efforts.

"I was definitely not sitting on thewhole day," responded House. "I was cagey with my efforts and rode when I needed to. The race was going to happen on the finish circuits and I wasn't prepared to nail myself 100km from the end." Indeed, the 30-year-old from Bournemouth, who spent much of his childhood in Texas, was half-expecting that one of his two nominated team leaders at Rapha-Condor would come up from behind. "I didn't even think about winning until five or six laps to go at the end."

Cavendish's confusion was understandable, as the race was frenetic, with no clear pattern until the final miles. The action had been expected to happen on the Tumble, a two-and-a-half-mile ascent over exposed moorland past the disused pit heaps near Blaenavon at just over half-distance. Instead, with Wiggins and the Kenyan-born Chris Froome to the fore, the race had split well before then. Small groups formed and reformed at the front before an elite group of a dozen emerged behind Wiggins – whose aggression must bode well for the Tour de France – and Froome, who will not ride the Tour because his Barloworld squad has not been selected.

Froome was one of the four who sprinted for gold along with House, the young Manxman Peter Kennaugh who rides for the national Under-23 academy, and Daniel Lloyd of the Cervelo team, the silver medallist here behind David Millar in 2007. Kennaugh was a stage winnerlast week in the Under-27 Giro d'Italia, where he finished third overall, and was the favourite for the finish sprint but managed only the bronze behind House and Lloyd.

A hard-fought men's race was a suitable conclusion to a weekend which had included Nicole Cooke's 10th nationalsenior road championship win on Saturday, on home soil. The Olympic andworld road race champion out-sprintedthe one rider who might threaten herfor leadership of Great Britain in 2012, the 20-year-old track world champion LizzieArmitstead. More significantly, the great Beryl Burton's record of 12 national women's road championship wins is now well within Cooke's reach.

Eyebrows had been raised on Saturday when Armitstead was not initially awarded the silver medal, on the grounds that she had won the Under-23 championship, held within the elite title race. That ruling was overturned on Saturday evening, with Armitstead given the senior silver, and today, when Kennaugh found himself in a similar position – best under-23 but elite bronze medallist – he was allowed to keep his elite medal.