Ian Stannard might have thawed out by now. Might have. The young British rider, who rides for Team Sky, signalled where his future ambitions lie on Sunday in an epic and apocalyptic Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, claiming his first podium place in a race that is deemed a 'semi-classic,' with third.

Stannard is one of those riders whose eyes shine and sparkle when you mention the Classics. Not for him the prestige and fame back home that would accompany an Olympic gold medal; nor the glitz and glamour of glory at the Tour de France.

No, what floats Stannard's boat is races like Sunday's torture-fest, run off in rain, wind and mud, over tough cobbled Belgian roads. As he was interviewed following the race he looked quite spectacularly dreadful - the bags under his eyes suggested he hadn't slept for a week, while the dirt ingrained in his face indicated he'd just emerged from a coal mine. After spending a month underground.

Stannard was one of three riders who escaped with 60km to go. The route had already been shortened - a tree had blown over, blocking the Côte de Trieu, lopping about 20km off the total distance. That increased the chances of the trio staying away - but it shouldn't detract from their performance, and endurance, in doing so.

In the final kilometres fatigue was etched on Stannard's face. You could almost feel it with every pedal rev. Anyone who's ever ridden a bike in winter will know how he felt: feet like blocks of ice, legs turning on auto pilot, hands disembodied and transformed into numb objects resting on the bars, hoping they won't be called into action to brake or, worse, change gear.

The scene around the leading trio told the full story: following cars with windscreen wipers at full pelt; by the roadside, small knots of spectators huddled beneath brollies. In any other country the roadside would surely have been empty, but this was Belgium, and it will take more than hypothermic conditions to keep them away from their beloved bike races.

Fighting back

Stannard looked the most wasted of the trio as they approached the finish. Yet he kept attacking - at 6km to go he launched a move that lasted about a kilometre. He was caught, dropped, regained them, and attacked again. Keeping warm - or non-hypothermic - was probably higher on his agenda at this point than winning.

At 22, he was the most junior of his two Dutch rivals - Bobbie Traksel is 28, Rick Flens 26. And when it came to sprinting, Stannard didn't have much to offer - the experienced Traksel taking it quite easily, the irony of his team name, Vacansoleil, going unappreciated. For this was about as far from a holiday in the sun as is possible to imagine this side of Siberia.

Third represented a coming-of-age achievement for Stannard, after a good weekend for Team Sky, with Juan Antonio Flecha's solo win in Saturday's other semi-classic, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.

Britain hasn't had many cobbled classics specialists - Roger Hammond has finished on the podium at Paris-Roubaix and Sean Yates was capable of performing in these races, claiming second in the 1989 Ghent-Wevelgem, in the kind of atrocious conditions that Stannard endured on Sunday.

Mark Cavendish has said he fancies having a crack at the Tour of Flanders. But Stannard's performance on Sunday suggests that his dream of excelling in Belgium's biggest one-day race, and in the 'Hell of the North,' Paris-Roubaix, could one day be realised.