A group of protestors forced the men's cycling world championships road race in Scotland to be suspended for nearly an hour on Sunday after blocking a country road between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The race was paused with just over 190km of the 271km to go with protesters, whose demands were not known, using glue and paint. Police spread powder on the road surface.
As the riders have no earpiece at the event, stewards had to halt the charging peloton on a narrow country lane near the Carron Valley Reservoir, 50km outside Glasgow.
David Lappartient, president of world cycling governing body UCI, was at the scene trying to calm the increasingly restless riders.
"Further to Police Scotland's confirmation of a protest in the Carron Valley area, which has temporarily interrupted the men's road race, we are working closely with all relevant authorities to minimise disruption to the race and also to ensure the safety of riders as our paramount concern," the UCI said in a statement.
Once the race restarted the peloton had nearly 200km to roll to the finish line including 10 laps of a 14km circuit in downtown Glasgow.
The demonstrators first stopped the breakaway group which had opened up an advance of more than six minutes, then the peloton in turn were forced to dismount.
Race favourites including defending champion Remco Evenepoel, Tadej Pogacar, Wout Van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel and Julian Alaphilippe were reduced to waiting, chatting with each other and even posing for selfies.
