Luke Rowe admitted the best of British was not on display on the streets of Glasgow after a disappointing showing at the European Championship road race.

The Welshman crossed the line 15th on Glasgow Green – the highest finish for a nation expected to be challenging for the podium on home roads.

Unrelenting conditions and a gruelling 230km circuit ensured that wasn’t to be the case however, with just Rowe and Scott Thwaites even finishing the race for the home favourites.

Matteo Trentin took the win for Italy, who had three riders ahead of Rowe – far from backing down about what went wrong in a race lasting close to six hours in Scotland.

“It was a super tough bike race, 230km on a circuit in the rain is a long, hard day out,” said the 28-year-old.

“Speaking to some of the guys from other nations, they were saying how sore they were at the end.

“From a team point of view, it wasn’t our best day out if I’m honest – we had quite a few numbers but lost some of the guys in quite quick succession.

“Then the moves started going, the top guys started firing and from my point of view, I could hold my hands up and say that I wasn’t good enough to go with their moves.

“You can use whatever excuse you want, you can look at having competed in the Tour de France and all that but at the end of the day I wasn’t good enough.”

Both the women’s road race and time trials had also been thwarted by weather in Glasgow earlier in the week, ramping up the task for Europe’s best to see what they could do on roads that also hosted the Commonwealth Games four years ago.

Trentin was the man who showed his skillset best of all, winning a sprint finish in a time of 5:50.02 ahead of Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel.

"At the moment it is unbelievable,” he said of being crowned European champion. “After everything I went through during the first half of the season it is really amazing.

"We knew the race was predicted to be really hard. There was a Commonwealth Games here in 2014 and both races were super demanding. The rain, of course, didn't help.”

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