SYDNEY, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Kazakstan's Yevgeniy Fedorov took the gold in the men's Under-23 road race in this year's UCI Road World Championships held in Wollongong, Australia on Friday.

Under rainy skies, the U-23 men took to the Wollongong roads to face 169.8km and over 2,000m climbing, composed of 10 technical laps punctuated by the climb of Mount Pleasant.

Come the final lap, a group of four held the front. Belgian Alec Segaert, Czech Mathias Vacek, Fedorov and French Mathis Le Berre battled the rain and wet roads, but their lead was just seven seconds over the large group behind.

At the final 5km, the lead hovered around 10 seconds. Anticipation mounted as it was unknown if Vacek and Fedorov could maintain the lead. Incredibly, with less than 2km to go, the lead had grown to 18 seconds.

It was down to a head-to-head between Vacek and Fedorov, and it was the Kazakh rider who managed to make that final burst of 150m to go for victory. Vacek took silver with the Norwegian time trial champion Soren Waerenskjold three seconds down in third.

Segaert crossed the finish line in 19th place despite the early lead, and Le Berre all the way back at 29th.

"I knew I was in good shape after racing the Vuelta a Espana," Fedorov told UCI. "I tried to do my best and it's great to match [Alexey] Lutsenko's win from 10 years ago."

"I knew if I was in contention at the top of the last climb, I had a chance," he said. "My legs felt good at the finish, and I'm delighted to win the last chance I had of racing the Under-23 UCI World Championships."

Wednesday's team time trial mixed relay was also an eventful day, and saw the Swiss team took gold with Italy silver and Australia bronze.