Annemiek van Vleuten looked strong enough to win another UCI Road World Championships title in Glasgow, Scotland on Sunday but, after being in the thick of the action in the closing kilometres as she worked for her Dutch teammate Demi Vollering, she suffered a puncture and was out of contention.
Coming across in eighth place, Van Vleuten put her frustration about the puncture out of her mind and had plenty of time to soak up the adoration of the crowds in Glasgow, many of whom had come over from the Netherlands, and enjoy the final Worlds of her career.
"I love the UK people, they have a special place in my heart," Van Vleuten said to reporters after the finish. "It was not nice to have a flat tire in the last lap. I was able to not get angry or disappointed, I felt like, 'I need to enjoy this'."
Van Vleuten spent the last 200 metres waving to the crowd, as she was not in sight of catching seventh-place Elise Chabbey (Switzerland) and ninth-place teammate Riejanne Markus was more than a minute behind.
"Thank you for all the people - I could feel they realise that it's my last world championships So it was a nice ending of my last world championships."
The season has been up and down for the 40-year-old. She was off in the Classics, bounced back to win La Vuelta Femenina and the Giro d'Italia Donne, but then suffered a stinging defeat in the Tour de France Femmes and landed just off the overall podium in fourth.
She could have easily been written off when she was in a chasing group almost a minute behind the front peloton after a bike change, but she managed to bridge across with Spain's Mavi Garcia to be a real factor in her final Worlds.
"It was the same last year with the broken elbow" - suffered in a crash during the team relay mixed time trial in Wollongong. She raced with the fracture, and, in the closing kilometres, caught the leading group and powered past to take the win.
She carried the same never-say-die mentality in Glasgow. "I was last year thinking like, okay, you can still help Marianne Vos to become World champion. So let's start the race. And at least I will go home with a better feeling, and then I became world champion."
"I'm super proud that in my last world championship, I was still in the mix, fighting actually for the win, and helping my team. The energy is still there."
Despite the result and still being on a top level, Van Vleuten reiterated her firm intention to retire at the end of the season.
"I'm still full of energy and want to get the best out of myself - I still had that attitude. I'm proud to say goodbye to the sport like this."
Women's cycling has undergone vast changes since the start of Van Vleuten's career, so much so that she said "I could write books about it".
"I started in 2007. And then 2008 was my first UCI team, we travelled in a camper van with all the bikes in the back. We travelled from the Tour of Limousin and to Sweden in that camper van. That was a crazy time.’"
"When I started it was an amateur sport and now it's a professional sport. And I'm proud to have been a little part of that.
"I think I helped a little bit to raise the bar for women's cycling to get it more professional - I was always the first one to go to altitude, now everyone's going to altitude to prepare.”
"I'm happy that I've been a part of the whole journey and it also feels good to leave the sport now that it's on a super high level. For sure it will make more steps and will continue to develop."
Van Vleuten still has to close out the season with her Movistar team and will finish out her career in the Tour of Scandinavia and then the Simac Ladies Tour closer to home.
Beyond that, she promises she will not do any more interval training, just easy rides and coffee stops.
