Brandon McNulty will make his debut in the rainbow jersey this Saturday 3 October at the Giro dell’Emilia, his UAE Team Emirates-XRG team has confirmed.

The American stunned the elite men’s road race at the UCI World Championships last Sunday, when he won with a 33km solo attack. The victory made him the first American man in 33 years to claim the title.

McNulty’s first port of call as world champion will be a trio of Italian one-day races: this Saturday’s Giro dell’Emilia, Sunday’s Coppa Agostini, and Tre Valle Varesine on Tuesday 6 October. He is then expected to take the start line at Il Lombardia, the final Monument of the year, on 10 October.

“I’m really excited to make my debut in the rainbow jersey this Saturday,” McNulty said in comments shared on UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s website. “The win in Montreal has definitely been something massive for me and I am still coming to terms with it a bit and letting it sink in.

“I still have a lot of racing left this season and I’m excited for it. We have a strong group for these races, and we’ll be aggressive as always.”

While McNulty has taken more than 20 individual wins since joining UAE in 2020, his role within the squad has largely been as a climbing domestique for the five-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar.

Becoming world champion himself is an honour, the American said, but “it doesn’t change my approach”.

“We’ll continue to race as we always do. Whether that’s attacking or helping my teammates – I know my role pretty well, and we have a great understanding of what works, so we’ll keep it that way,” the 28-year-old said.

Racing alongside McNulty at the Giro dell’Emilia will be Igor Arrieta, Filippo Baroncini, Felix Großschartner, Jhonatan Narváez, Tim Wellens and Adam Yates. UAE has won the last two editions of the event, through Isaac del Toro in 2025 and Pogačar in 2024.

The team is still to announce a racing comeback for the Slovenian, the previous world champion, after he crashed out of the Vuelta a España at the end of August. Having missed the World Championships, Pogačar will also miss his European Championships title defence this Sunday, as he prioritises his recovery from neck and collarbone fractures. He has, however, returned to outdoor training.

The Giro dell’Emilia is a 1.Pro-ranked event, held over 197.9km in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. The race closes on a finishing circuit in Bologna, with five ascents of the San Luca climb, at the top of which the finish line is painted.

McNulty has never competed in the event before.

Almost exactly a year after joining FDJ United-SUEZ, the top-ranked women's WorldTour team, Lauren Dickson lined up to make her debut at the UCI Road World Championships in Montréal, racing against her teammates, including Demi Vollering, who was destined to take the rainbow jersey.

Dickson finished 18th in the women's elite road race, but representing Great Britain on the global stage and placing in the top 20 is just the latest chapter in an extraordinary story, which has seen the young Scot go from a promising triathlete working jobs in garden centres, offices and schools to becoming a professional cyclist riding alongside the very best in world, in the space of two-and-a-half years.

"I came through a British Triathlon Performance Centre, and right from 16 I was on a British athletics feature programme, a talent course," the Edinburgh-based rider, now 26, explained just ahead of her ride at the Worlds.

During this process, she received physiotherapy and media training, and was taught about nutrition and so on, but she credits her exposure to 'real life' as a significant motivating factor during her journey to becoming a full-time cyclist.

"Having worked in an office, I can be even more grateful that this is my career, because I know that, for me, sitting in the office, all I'm thinking about is training before and after work. That's all I want to do. So then, when [cycling] is your job, it feels even more special."

The dream-like odyssey Dickson has been on for the last couple of years was, in part, sparked by encouraging comments from Australian rider Anya Louw, which came about through pure serendipity.

"My husband [fellow Scot Sean Flynn] is a professional cyclist, and I was training with him and his housemate, who was a WorldTour rider. [Louw] saw my numbers and she was like, ‘You know, you really should try cycling," Dickson recalls.

"I'd always loved riding, like it was always my favourite part of the training for triathlon – on big group rides, you get to see different places – but it was only when Anya said 'You really should give it a go, what have you got to lose?’, [that's when] I started to do it and started to realise, actually, yeah, it's really fun."

Her debut WorldTour season has not been without its challenges. Following a breakthrough ride at the Women's Giro - her first Grand Tour - where she was instrumental in Demi Vollering's overall win and took 11th herself, she sustained a collarbone fracture at Tour de Suisse. She came back at the Tour of Britain Women where she won Queen of the Mountains jersey, but two crashes ended her hopes of a top-ten finish.

She bounced back in style with her first professional win on stage four of the Faun Tour Femme in early September, and says training and competing alongside riders like Vollering, with whom she shares a coach, has been a priceless education in itself.

"It's one of those cliches, but if you learn from the best, it's the best way to do it, and I really think it's true," she said, explaining how exposure to more experienced elite riders and the FDJ team psychology has shaped the mindset she takes into races.

"You're really ambitious and you know what your end goal is, and you really focus on having a plan to get there. We want to try and shape the race to play to our advantage. Learning how to do that, and learning by doing so what other teams might also do, so you're prepared mentally and like physically you're ready for what's likely to happen - it's really important."

The Worlds are done and dusted, and her debut professional road season is almost behind her (the Scot will be one of four British riders to compete at the European championships in Ljubljana, Slovenia, this weekend, where she will ride the elite women's time trial while Ethan Hayter and Callum Thornley will ride the elite men's, and Ben Wiggins will ride the under-23 time trial. )

But Dickson has even bigger goals in her sights, including the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. "It's really ambitious, but I guess I'm working towards that,” she revealed. "I'm really trying to focus on the road and the time trial. It's something that we're going to invest in over the winter this year.

"In cycling, a lot of things can happen, so you make most of everything. Setting my sights on LA would be a huge dream."

Tadej Pogačar's team has moved to quash any rumours that he might ride the European Championships road race, despite the Slovenian's apparent wish to do so.

The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider has a particular interest in this one, given it starts in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, and passes through his home village of Komenda on its way to a hilly finishing circuit on the edge of the Slovenian Alps. He is also the defending champion, and his name even appears on the longlist of starters on the official championship website.

But Pogačar is still recovering from a heavy crash in the Vuelta a España, in which he fractured his collarbone and a cervical vertebrae. He has already had to watch Enric Mas win the Vuelta, and grit his teeth through a World Championships. No wonder he wants to be racing again as soon as possible.

However, UAE team boss Mauro Gianetti has put the issue to bed, expressing sympathy for Pogačar's plight, but insisting that he can't take any risks with his health.

Speaking to La Gazetta dello Sport, Gianetti said: "His desire to be there is understandable, but it's too early. His health comes first, so it won't happen.

"We have to face reality," he added. "You can't rush anything, even though a European Championships in Slovenia is a unique opportunity for Tadej."

Instead, the team is likely to be led by Primož Roglič, who looked in very good form at the World Championships in Montréal, with back-up from Matej Mohorič and Jan Tratnik, among others.

Gianetti's comments underline a team statement, issued earlier in September, that announced a contract extension for Pogačar until 2032, and also stated he would not race again this season. Contacted by Cycling Weekly, UAE Team Emirates-XRG confirmed that Gianetti's comments also applied to Il Lombardia, and nothing had changed since the team's original statement.

This means that, for the first time since 2020, there will be a winner in the season-ending Italian Monument who is not Tadej Pogačar. In addition, it will be a brand new winner who crosses the line in Como on 10 October, for nobody who won previous to Pogačar is actually still riding professionally – that's how long ago it was.

It would appear then, once and for all, that we will not see the Slovenian in action again until 2027.

There's something about the World Championships that is almost unique in bike racing, with the possible exception of Paris-Roubaix; and never was this more in evidence than in the Worlds races at Montréal at the weekend. While the Grand Tours and some of the Classics can feel almost orchestrated, especially when one team or rider is clearly strongest (naming no names), the Worlds is a visceral, two-wheeled boxing match.

With huge numbers of fatigue-inducing kilometres already in the legs, and isolated from any outside help, we saw riders bludgeon each other repeatedly around the Mount Royal circuit, with varying levels of tiredness, desperation and determination all laid bare for the world to see.

If you watched those displays of no-holds-barred brutality in Montréal and wondered exactly what it took to be there at the sharp end of a race like that, fourth-place finisher Quinn Simmons has at least part of the answer for you.

Like his US teammates Matteo Jorgenson and new champion Brandon McNulty, Simmons posted his ride on Strava. All three files showed the outlandish 276km (171-mile) distance, the long hours in the saddle, and the vicious, serrated profile of Mount Royal's multiple laps.

But Quinn Simmons – who posts under the pseudonym Ricky Bobby (a fictional NASCAR driver) – reveals one parameter that is rare to see from a pro cyclist, and which gives a deeper insight into what it takes to be up there among the best: power.

The pop culture references don't stop with Simmons's Strava name – he called his Worlds ride 'Someone PLAY FREEBIRD', and quotes the film 'Miracle on Ice' in the description, writing: "You play 'em 10, you might lose 9. Not today."

On to that all important power. For a moving time of 6hr 24min 56sec, Simmons averaged 291 watts which, when taking into account the myriad climbs and changes of pace, translated to a monster normalised power of 361 watts. Other stats include an average heart rate of 150bpm, with a 190bpm maximum – achieved as he crested the Voie Camillien Houde for the eighth time, during his stint out front with Mathieu van der Poel and Primož Roglič. He also registered numerous Strava Achievements, including KoM on the Pont de 35 UP segment – a motorway bridge early on in course, of all places.

Speaking after the race, Simmons told NOS: "In cycling so many times you make a plan and it doesn't go well. We lose so many races every year. In the meeting last night… I mean we're all on different teams, and we said, 'no matter what, an American needs to finish on the podium'. And I said 'Hey boys, anything's possible. We race for the podium but more could happen if we ride like this. And we did exactly that."

Addressing his fourth place, just outside the medals, he said: "Whatever – who cares about missing a medal when the team takes the jersey."

A round of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup due to be hosted in Glasgow in December has proven so popular with cycling fans that the initial release of 10,000 tickets has sold out two months before the event, and a new raft of 2000 tickets has just been made available, British Cycling announced this morning.

Organised by the Union Cycliste International and Flanders Classics, the Cyclo-Cross World Cup is the marquee series of the international cyclo-cross calendar and a winter highlight for cycling fans, with thousands of spectators attending each round to witness the planet's most skilful riders racing across super challenging courses, tackling grass, mud and obstacles.

The 2025–2026 UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup was collected by Dutch duo Mathieu van der Poel, who emerged victorious from every round he contested to take the overall series win for the second time in his career, and Lucinda Brand, who stacked up four wins.

The vast majority of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup rounds are staged in mainland Europe, and this is the first time the event has come back to Britain for 12 years, since a round was held in Milton Keynes in 2014. The long absence, plus a wave of interest in elite cycling possibly accelerated by anticipation ahead of the 2027 Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes Grand Départs being hosted in Britain, has meant demand for tickets has exceeded expectations.

Contested across a total of 12 rounds, the 2026–27 World Cup kicks off on Friday 27 November in the Czech city of Ostrava, where competitors will race around a former mining site. Round takes place in Tábor, also in the Czech Republic, on Sunday 29 November, and then it's Scotland's turn.

The highly anticipated third round will take place on 13 December in Kelvingrove Park, a 34-hectare Victorian park in Glasgow’s West End. When the location of the event was first announced, Cameron Mason, the four-time British cyclo-cross champion who hails from the nearby Scottish town of Linlithgow predicted that: “It’s going to be the biggest moment in my career.”

Mason, who achieved his aim of securing a stage podium finish during the last World Cup, will be a massive home favourite in December, along with fellow Scot, Anna Flynn, who is the female British cyclo-cross champion and comes from Edinburgh.

The last few tickets, which cost around £31.50 per adult (with concessions and family rates available) can currently be bought through Ticketmaster, but they are going fast.

After Glasgow, the series will head back to its traditional homeland, with stages held in the Belgian cities of Antwerp, Koksijde, Gavere, Namur, Zonhoven and Hamme punctuated by events in Besançon (France) and Benidorm (Spain) before the World Cup comes to a conclusion in Hoogerheide, the Netherlands, on Sunday 24 January.

“Passing 10,000 ticket sales with 75 days still to go demonstrates the appetite for world-class cycling in the UK, and we’re delighted to be releasing additional tickets in response to that demand,” said Darren Henry, Managing Director of British Cycling Ventures.

“We want to build a portfolio of major events across different cycling disciplines, creating more opportunities for fans to experience the sport, attracting new audiences and giving partners more ways to connect with them. Kelvingrove Park will provide a spectacular setting on 13 December. The momentum behind major cycling events in the UK is clear, and our ambition is to keep building on it in the years ahead."

“I had two goals going into the race,” Isla Short told Cycling Weekly, the day after winning the 3-Peaks Cyclo-cross challenge, justifiably deemed as Britain’s toughest event of its kind. “They were kind of pipe dreamy goals because it was my first time and I really didn't know what would happen. And I achieved both of them.”

Her first goal was to win the race. The second was to set a new course record. Not a bad Sunday’s work really, especially for someone who has barely ever competed in a senior cyclo-cross event in her adult life.

Having announced her retirement from elite-level World Cup mountain bike racing at the end of last month, four-time British national MTB champion Isla Short emerged victorious from the 3-Peaks Cyclo-cross challenge on Sunday, in her debut appearance at the infamously tough event in the Yorkshire Dales.

The 30-year-old Scot beat three-time 3-Peaks winner, Bryony Halcrow, and also set a new women’s record for the legendary 61km (38-mile) course, finishing in 03:36:30, despite her lack of experience with dropbars.

“When I was younger, I raced a lot of the Scottish Cycle Cross series, and then I raced a couple of national trophies,” she explained to CW. “And I've done one race in Belgium, three or four years ago. But I would say this is quite different. It didn't feel like a cyclo-cross race as such. It just felt like big adventure.

“I only got my gravel bike three weeks ago. And I've never ridden on the drops before either, so I've been putting my heart and soul into trying to be as prepared as possible.”

Halcrow's Hope Tech Factory Racing teammate Madeline Moorhouse-Smith was third-placed in the women's race, but as with the men’s race – in which Lachlan Morton beat Giles Drake in a thrilling sprint finish – it was the contest between the leading pair that defined the day.

While Short’s wealth of mountain bike experience was obviously invaluable, the strict rules around the 3-Peaks prohibit straight handlebars and place limits on tyre size, despite the high technicality of the course. It’s a unique race, and being a newcomer, the challenger was at a disadvantage against Halcrow, who is also an accomplished fell runner (useful when at least 6km of the route is deemed completely unrideable).

“I'd spoken to lots of people who had done the race and the chat was very much centred around it being awful and very hard, and how I would be full of regret while I was doing it and then after I finished, I would think: ‘Oh, that was amazing – I'll do it again’. And because I went in with that mindset, prepared for it to be really brutal, it was actually way more enjoyable than I had anticipated.”

I do quite a lot of running, I would say, for a mountain biker, obviously not compared to Bryony, but I run on average 10k a week and then a little bit more in the winter and I do a lot of hiking as well. So, I felt, I actually felt reasonably prepared for those sections, and it was kind of nice as well, because all the, everyone was questioning that part of my skills, and I felt like a bit of a secret weapon.

But I have a metal plate in my collarbone, so I have been stressing and figuring out how I could actually tolerate having the bike on my shoulder for any length of time. I've been made fun of for having top tube padding, but honestly, I wouldn't have been able to carry the bike without it, so needs must.

“Bryony is a very good descender on foot, I noticed especially, but also on the bike, on drop bars,” Short said. “And, [her] having ridden the descents four times before, versus me having never ridden them, there was a clear disparity in our level there.

“I think the biggest thing isn’t necessarily the drops, it’s the lack of suspension. I don't ride a hardtail, I only ride a full-suspension mountain bike. When you hit rocks and stuff on a full-suss bike, the rocks get out of the way, whereas when you hit stuff on a rigid drop-bar bike, you move and not the rocks.

“I didn't have a dropper on the bike. I wanted to fit one, but unfortunately the frame wasn't compatible. I was speaking to Bryony at the finish and she said that was a change that she’d made that really helped. So I need to have a think about that for next year.”

The two riders swapped the lead several times throughout the race, but rarely found themselves together. “I summited every climb first,” recalls Short. “After Ingleborough, Bryony got me on the descent. The road section from Ribblehead back to Pen-y-Ghent was awful. The headwind was relentless and I didn't have anyone with me. I was just riding, hoping that Bryony was also on her own.

I knew Pen-y-Ghent would be my strongest climb, because it was the most rideable, so I made sure I fuelled really well so I came into the bottom of the ascent able to give it everything. I caught her halfway up, and I just tried to get the gap as big as possible at the summit because I knew she was descending quicker than me. I definitely went faster than I would have liked to on the descent because I knew she was chasing me.”

In the end, both lead riders broke Louise Robinson’s course record for the race, which has stood since 2003, despite the ground conditions being really wet, and raging headwinds kicking in after Ingleborough.

“There's a 3-hour 30-minute carrot dangling for both of us for next year,” says Short. “And I think both Briony and I have kind of got that in our sights now.”

First though, she is off to South Africa to race Gravel Burn. Since deciding to retire from World Cup mountian biking, she is focussing more on marathon MTB, but it definitely seems like Short is leaning into the gravel scene too, and in true style, she’s jumping in at the deep end.

Professional road and gravel rider Lachlan Morton took victory at his third time of trying in the 3-Peaks Cyclo-cross race this weekend, beating Giles Drake from Wheelbase Cabtech Castelli by the slenderest of margins in the most exciting finish to the infamously tough event seen for over 60 years. Isla Short, meanwhile, won the women's race on her debut.

Last year the Australian was beaten into second place by Jenson Young, who missed this year’s event because he’s heading Down Under to compete in the Gravel World Championships.

On Sunday, it looked as though the EF Education-EasyPost rider might miss out again, with two-time previous winner Drake maintaining a lead for the majority of the race, which takes place on extremely technical terrain in the Yorkshire Dales, with at least 6km of the course being deemed completely unrideable, so participants have to master the art of running while carrying their bikes. In the end, after 67km (38-miles) of brutal racing, it all came down to a sprint for the line.

“We were together for the entire race, just with little gaps opening up here and there,” Drake told Cycling Weekly. “I was running a bit stronger than Lachlan, but I think he very much paced his running, rather than going into the red. On every summit I had a 10-, 20- or 30-second gap, but he was never out of sight. It was always super close. We were together on both road sections, and all the way up Pen-y-ghent, until the steps at the top, where I just put a little burst in.

“We traded turns on the road, but the only time he was ahead of me was when he caught me off Pen-y-ghent. He went in the lead a little bit down there, but other than that, he was, he was pretty much glued to my wheel on the ascents and descents.

“As we headed into the bridge, he came past me. He overshot the corner a little bit, which allowed me to nip in inside and then it was just a drag race for 10 metres to the finish line, and he just pipped me. I'm obviously a bit gutted about it, but I gave it everything, and so did Lachlan. And the chips fell where they did.”

According to historians of the legendary race, 1961 was the last time it went down to a sprint finish, so while he might have missed out on a fourth victory, Drake was a key player in something that will be long remembered at the weekend. “To be part of that, it's worth it,” he concedes, magnanimous in defeat.

“Lachlan is a super nice guy. The thing I like about him is that he doesn't need to come and do this race, but it's clearly under his skin. He wanted to come back and he wanted to give it his all and win it. And I think that's a great thing for the race.”

Jack Lucas from Spectrum racing finished third, two minutes after the lead pair, and 3-Peaks legend Rob Jebb was fourth, on his 27th time of racing.

Competing in the event for the eighth time, Drake said it never gets any easier, but the year would feel “empty” if he didn’t do it, and he’ll likely be back next year for another attempt at getting his third victory.

Every year I say, ‘I don't know if I can do this again, I don't know if I can put myself through this again,’” he told CW. But until I think I can't be competitive, or life takes a whole different turn, I think I'll be there and come last weekend in September.

“I think people underestimate this race. Because they're a good bike rider or a good fell runner, they think ‘I can do that’. And It's not until you ride it that you really realise how hard it is, and how unique the skill set is. And how amazing it is as a race, because honestly, if somebody came up with this idea in 2026, the health and safety people would say: ‘No, you're not doing that!’”

France’s Paul Seixas cut a dejected figure as he passed through the media zone after the UCI World Championships road race on Sunday. He dropped his gaze to the ground, and responding to the press, brandished his performance “a disgrace”, after he cramped in the finale and fell out of contention.

The 20-year-old jostled alongside the favourites until the final 13.8km lap of the 273.4km race. As his rivals attacked each other in a last-ditch attempt to close the tearaway winner, the USA’s Brandon McNulty, Seixas posted up in the saddle, holding his left thigh.

He went on to finish 15th overall, having said before the race that “anything other than gold would be a disappointment”.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he told Eurosport afterwards. “What I did today is a disgrace. Cramping up like that, it’s a childish mistake. I’ve never cramped up in my life on a bike.

“I’m extremely disappointed, not only for myself because it’s what I deserve, but for the whole of France, the whole team, who did an incredible job and don’t deserve a leader like me.”

Second-year pro Seixas has held the spotlight this season as French cycling’s next big hope. He won the WorldTour stage race Itzulia Basque Country in April, followed by the one-day Classic La Flèche Wallonne, and went on to finish fourth on his Tour de France debut as the race’s youngest starter in 89 years.

He turned 20 last week, three days before the World Championships road race.

Berating himself afterwards, he wondered if his downfall had been due to dehydration. “Maybe I under-estimated how much I was sweating on the bike,” he said.

“It’s hard to be comforted right now. You can’t move on to something else so easily. It’ll take me a bit of time to process this, I think.”

France’s national coach, Thomas Voeckler, was more forgiving in his analysis of the race.

“Paul Seixas was part of the race with winners like that,” he also told Eurosport, pointing to Paris-Roubaix winner Wout van Aert (Belgium).

“[Seixas] said before the race that any result other than a victory would be a failure, so he sees it as a failure. He needs time to process it. It’s frustrating, but that’s sport... That’s what makes cycling. It’s no big deal. I’m upset for him more than for myself.”

France worked hard to control the race in the early stages, relying on Bruno Armirail in particular to reel in the day’s breakaway.

Looking back on how the race panned out, Voeckler said he wouldn’t have changed the team’s tactics. “When someone wins, that doesn’t mean they did everything right. And when someone doesn’t win, that doesn’t mean you have to throw everything away,” he said.

“There are disappointed countries – France is part of it, as is Belgium – but we have to be reasonable; we’re talking about a boy, and we’re disappointed because we knew he had the potential to do it, but the guy’s just turned 20.”

Seixas’s chance at rainbow redemption will come on home soil next year, when the ‘Super Worlds’ are scheduled to take place in France’s Haute-Savoie region, a two-hour drive from his home in Lyon.

Despite his disappointment over his road race result, Seixas still left Canada with a bronze medal, earned in the individual time trial.

Tom Pidcock said he had "no regrets" after finishing seventh at Sundays elite men's World Championships road race, despite looking like one of the strongest riders in the event.

After new champion Brandon McNulty attacked with 33km to go, strong support from his USA teammates – especially Matteo Jorgenson – had made it very difficult to establish any gaps, said Pidcock afterwards.

“Tactically, it was very difficult," said the Yorkshire rider, who spearheaded the Great Britain team alongside Oscar Onley. "I think I had really, really good legs. But to make the difference, to get the gap with the wind the way it was, and with the USA team with Matteo [Jorgenson]... he was super strong after Brandon attacked."

Pidcock also alluded to unspoken support for McNulty from the American's UAE Team Emirates-XRG trade teammate Isaac Del Toro. The young Mexican was part of the final selection and had looked strong enough to potentially feature in the medals. But, said Pidcock with a smile: "Of course, with Isaac on the same team [as McNulty], it was always going to be super difficult to make a difference there in the end after six hours."

Pidcock was speaking post-race with a still-bloody knee – a battle wound sustained in an early crash, which saw him forced to fight back from behind the peloton up to the front groups.

"The crash definitely didn't help, there was a bit of a chase," said Pidcock.

The Pinarello Q36.5 rider said that the chase group of which he was a part seemed unwilling to work together in order to catch McNulty. He felt as though he had done all he could, he said, and would leave the race with no regrets.

"No, there was not much more I could have done," he said. "It was really difficult. No one wanted to work together in that group… and to wait and gamble it all on the last lap and to try something… I don't have any regrets, I think I did what I could.

"It’s a bit disappointing, honestly, but I can be happy with my legs, and there's more years to try again.”

Onley and Adam Yates were the only other British finishers, with Onley coming home in 17th at 3:09, and Yates 31st at 6:37.

He was the most unlikely of names on the start list: a team masseur, without a single UCI point, who hadn’t raced a bike in nine years. But Slovakia’s Vladimír Kováčik ended up one of the heroes of this year’s UCI Road World Championships, after he was drafted in at the last minute to represent his country, and held pace with the peloton for over 100km.

The 28-year-old masseur started alone for Slovakia in Sunday’s elite men’s road race in Montreal, Canada. His country was allowed to field up to four riders; however, all the other hopefuls either dropped out due to injury or prior commitments to their trade teams.

Failing to field a rider could have had repercussions on the nation's qualification for the LA Olympics in 2028; the UCI might have downgraded the ranking of Slovakia’s national championships for next year, meaning their riders would earn half as many qualification points.

So, with the deadline already passed for registering new riders, the national team coach turned to an unlikely source: 28-year-old Kováčik, who still held a racing licence, and had travelled to Canada as a soigneur for the squad.

“I don’t have words for this one. It's a dream for every rider, and I’m a masseur, so it’s crazy,” Kováčik told Eurosport ahead of the race start.

“The information was that the last rider was really injured and he couldn’t come, so a few days ago, it was the last option.”

Prior to Sunday, Kováčik’s last race came at a Polish one-day event in 2017 that he did not finish, then aged 19.

He lasted just over 100km within the peloton on his Worlds debut, before he was dropped on the entrance to the finishing circuit in Montreal, with around 168km to go, and pulled out of the race.

Speaking beforehand, he said he had done “a little bit of training, but just only like an amateur”.

“It was a little difficult to put the numbers on, because it was nine years ago when I did it for the last time. And I shaved my legs. Yeah really, really difficult,” he laughed.

The world title was won in the end by the USA’s Brandon McNulty, who soloed from a front group with 33km to go.

Slovakia have won the event three times in the past, all courtesy of Peter Sagan, who went back-to-back-to-back between 2015 and 2017. The country won gold in the under-23 road race in Canada last week through Viktória Chladaňová.

Olympic champion Katy Marchant has announced her retirement from track cycling after 13 years on the Great Britain Cycling Team.

The 33-year-old, a heptathlete as a teenager, joined the national squad in 2013, and went on to represent Great Britain at three Olympic Games, winning the gold medal in the team sprint in Paris 2024.

She leaves the sport a former world and European champion, and the current world record holder in the team sprint, alongside her team-mates Emma Finucane and Sophie Capewell.

“I’ve achieved more than I could have ever dreamed of achieving. Inevitably I was going to retire at some point, and I always just said, ‘You’ll know when you know. I don’t really know what you’ll know, but you’ll just know.’ And guys, I just know,” Marchant told Cycling Weekly and other media in a round table interview.

“It’s not been a difficult decision. Don’t get me wrong, there have been moments where I’ve thought, ‘Could I just…? Should I just…? What if I just…?’ But I know what it takes to push on for another two years, and I’m incredibly proud of where I’ve got to and what I’ve done. I just don’t want to make those choices anymore to keep doing what it takes to get to LA [Olympics in 2028].”

“I never wanted to walk away from this sport because I had to, because I felt like I’d overstayed my welcome, or because physically I wasn’t capable anymore,” she continued. “I’ve written the story for the last 13 years, and I wanted to finish it the way I wanted to finish.”

Three years after first taking up track cycling, Marchant won bronze in the individual sprint on her Olympic debut at Rio 2016. She then spent a challenging period as the sole member of Britain’s women’s sprint programme, following the retirement of her close friend and team-mate Becky James in 2017, and qualified alone for the Tokyo Games in 2021.

In 2022, Marchant took time away from racing to give birth to her son, Arthur. She returned in 2023 to help spearhead the sprint programme’s resurgence.

“The whole of 2024 was an incredible year for me,” she said. Between January and November that year, Marchant became European champion in the 500m time trial, Olympic and world champion in the team sprint, and the world record holder. “That’s what dreams are made of,” she said.

“There’s a small part of me that’s a little bit sad I’m not going to be part of [the GB women’s sprint programme] anymore, but at the same time, I still carry a lot of pride that I’ve helped build that,” she said.

Following a crash into the stands at the UCI Track Champions League in December 2024, in which she broke her arm and two fingers, Marchant put her racing on hold in 2025 to have a second child, Walter.

Again, she returned to elite competition, representing England at the 2026 Commonwealth Games, where she won silver in the team sprint. It was at that championships, she said, that she first had thoughts of retiring.

“I just had this funny feeling,” she said. “In the middle of the day, I spoke to Emma [Finucane] and told her what I was feeling and explained the feelings and I said, ‘Look, if this is the last day that I’m racing ever, I want to flipping enjoy it, and I want you to enjoy it with me.’”

Her final race was the keirin on the Sunday, in which she finished fifth and Finucane first.

Asked about her post-retirement plans, Marchant said she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She lives on a farm outside of her hometown of Leeds with her husband, Rob, and their two sons. “I’ll be driving tractors through the summer, but I’ll definitely need to find that thing for myself,” she said.

“I’ve not really thought that far ahead, other than closing this chapter of my current life and reflecting on it in a nice way.

“Hopefully I can pave the way for not just cyclists but mums in sport. To be able to achieve that, and to do that twice, it’s quite unheard of, and to get back to a very, very competitive high level, I’m incredibly proud of myself. I hope people can watch that or learn from that and think that it is possible and worth doing.”

On the streets of Montréal, Demi Vollering finally succeeded in her quest to become World Champion, as she outsprinted Kasia Niewiadoma to claim the women’s elite road race title after a thrilling showdown between the two rivals on the final lap.

“I think I can still not believe it,” Vollering said in her post-race interview. “I worked so hard towards this goal. It takes guts to truly believe in it with your whole heart, to gather a team around you with such strong girls and they all sacrifice for you, when they maybe also have a chance. It means a lot from them, but I’m so proud of everybody from the team. They rode the whole race in the front and Puck [Pieterse] did an amazing leadout, so I couldn’t not finish the job.”

After Vollering initially went solo with an attack on the Côte de Camillien Houde with just under 40km to go, it looked as though she could go all the way to the finish, but Niewiadoma and Elisa Longo Borghini worked together and managed to bridge across to the Dutch rider on the penultimate lap.

“There were so many moments where I thought I went too early. It stayed so close the whole time, I didn’t dare to turn around and look back, because I thought they were almost in my wheel already,” Vollering continued. “At one point, they came back and I was like ‘oh sh*t’, but it was still not over. I had to believe in it from my little toe. I just dared, tried again and never gave up until the finish line.”

Longo Borghini then attacked on the uphill rise to the finish as they began the final lap of the race. However, her efforts would ultimately prove costly as she was then caught by Vollering and Niewiadoma on the Côte de Camillien Houde, before being distanced shortly afterwards.

Not wanting to take the race to a sprint, Niewiadoma attempted a final attack on the Avenue Pagnuelo with 4km to go, and though she briefly put her under pressure, it was ultimately not enough to distance her rival.

Vollering then led through the final corner before the sprint to the line, where she had still had enough in the legs to outsprint Niewiadoma in the final few hundred metres, as she took the victory that had eluded her for so long.

When asked about the final sprint, she said “I was not planning to give it away anymore from that moment. That was mine.”

Having finished runner-up in the road race in 2023, and with silver and bronze medals in the time trial, Vollering has finally added a World Championship title to her illustrious palmarès and will now have the honour of wearing the rainbow jersey for the next twelve months.

“I think it was an amazing race to watch, I’m very proud to be part of that and I cannot wait to watch it back,” she concluded.

How It Happened

The women’s elite road race saw the riders take on a 180km course around Montréal, with a 72.8km lead-in before eight laps of a 13.4km circuit, with an ascent of the Côte de Camillien Houde on each lap.

The race began with several riders from some of the less represented nations attempting to get up the road, before Marte Berg Edseth (Norway), Natalie Quinn (United States), Beatriz Roxo (Portugal) and Gergana Stoyanova (Bulgaria) formed a four-rider breakaway and established a lead over the peloton at the head of the race.

Their advantage would stretch to over four and a half minutes as they made their way towards the finishing circuit, before the group then began to fracture as Roxo and Stoyanova were both dropped on the climb up to Mont Royal.

In the peloton, there were a number of crashes in the lead-in to the circuit, as several riders hit the deck in the opening stages of the race.

However, the worst incident came on the first lap of the circuit, as a major pile-up in the peloton with 95km to go saw several of the pre-race favourites hit the deck, with Paula Blasi (Spain), Kim Le Court (Mauritius), Niamh Fisher-Black (New Zealand) and defending champion Magdeleine Vallières (Canada) among those involved.

Those worst affected were Caroline Andersson (Sweden) and Lauretta Hanson (Australia), who were both taken to hospital immediately following the crash.

The crash also caused splits in the peloton, as many riders were also held up and forced to chase back on to the main group. Some were able to make it back on, whilst those such as Le Court were unable to regain contact and others simply abandoned the race.

Edseth then dropped Quinn from the breakaway, but both riders were caught by the bunch soon afterwards, meaning that the race was now open to attacks.

The first major move from the peloton came with 53km to go, as Maëva Squiban (France) went clear on the fifth ascent of the Côte de Camillien Houde and drew out an advantage of around forty-five seconds over the bunch.

However, on the following lap the contenders came to the fore, as Demi Vollering (Netherlands) launched an explosive attack off the front of the main group with 39km to go after a massive leadout from her Dutch teammates, immediately putting all of her rivals under pressure as the gap to Squiban vanished in an instant.

The French rider attempted to stay with Vollering as she powered past, but quickly began to slip backwards and latched onto the back of the chasing group as they went over the top of the climb.

The counterattacks then began behind, as Elisa Longo Borghini (Italy), Kasia Niewiadoma (Poland) and Marlen Reusser (Switzerland) all made attempts to bridge across to Vollering over the next lap and a half, but they were unable to gain permanent separation from the rest of the group.

Niewiadoma then attacked again on the Côte de la Polytechnique with just over 20km to go, bringing Longo Borghini and Juliette Berthet (France) along with her, whilst Reusser and Puck Pieterse (Netherlands) found themselves distanced.

The chasing trio now had Vollering in their sights, as her advantage had shrunk to only a handful of seconds. They then made the junction with around 15km to go, with Berthet taking slightly longer to plug the gap, as she struggled to hold the wheel of the other two.

Going onto the final lap, Longo Borghini tried her luck from the four-rider group, as she attempted to go solo with an attack, distancing the others with a sharp acceleration on the short rise up to the finish line as they took the bell.

Her lead would be short-lived though, as Vollering put in a massive effort on the final ascent of the Côte de Camillien Houde, dropping Berthet and catching the Italian rider.

Another acceleration then saw Longo Borghini lose contact, with Niewiadoma the only rider able to follow Vollering as they went over the top of the climb.

The leading duo then worked together to extend their advantage, with those distanced continuing to chase behind.

Not wanting to go to a sprint, Niewiadoma then attacked on the short, steep rise of the Avenue Pagnuelo with 4km to go, but failed to distance her Dutch rival.

As they swung through the right-hand corner the road rose up ahead of them to the finish. Niewiadoma then launched her sprint from behind with around 150m to go, but Vollering was quick to react and would not relent until she had reached the finish.

Niewiadoma then began to cramp up in the final metres and was forced to settle for second place, as Vollering powered all the way to the line to become World Champion.

Longo Borghini then crossed the line a few seconds later to claim the bronze medal ahead of Reusser in fourth place, whilst other riders, including Berthet and Pieterse, came across the line in dribs and drabs in the minutes that followed.

Results

UCI Road World Championships 2026, Women’s Elite Road Race: Brossard > Montréal (180km)

1. Demi Vollering, Netherlands, in 4:45:09
2. Kasia Niewiadoma, Poland, +17s
3. Elisa Longo Borghini, Italy, +4s
4. Marlen Reusser, Switzerland, +8s
5. Juliette Berthet, France, +39s
6. Puck Pieterse, Netherlands, +1:36
7. Célia Gery, France, +2:55
8. Dominika Włodarczyk, Poland, +4:16
9. Maeva Squiban, France, +5:48
10. Franziska Koch, Germany, +5:51

A major crash in the elite women’s road race at the World Championships put many of the pre-race favourites out of contention, as a large number of riders hit the deck with around 95km to go.

Among those to go down was the reigning champion Magdeleine Vallières (Canada), who had hoped to try and defend her title on home soil after her victory in Kigali last year, but had those aims dashed by the crash and was ultimately forced to abandon at the end of the third lap.

Meanwhile, last year’s U23 world champion Paula Blasi (Spain) also found herself on the ground for the second time in the race after having already taken a tumble with 111km to go, and she abandoned the race shortly afterwards.

Those worst affected by the crash were Caroline Andersson (Sweden) and Lauretta Hanson (Australian), as they were both taken to hospital immediately after the crash, with the latter seen being stretchered into an ambulance by paramedics. Both riders were confirmed to be conscious.

Niamh Fisher-Black (New Zealand), Sigrid Ytterhus Haugset (Norway), Flora Perkins (Great Britain) and Christina Schweinberger (Austria) were also among those to abandon the race as a result of the crash.

Kim Le Court (Mauritius) also had her hopes of a rainbow jersey go up in smoke, as she was caught behind a split caused by the crash, as several riders attempted to chase back on to the main group, whilst the favourites’ teams continued to push on.

Today, the UCI published an 8,000 word, 40 page document outlining changes that could improve the “Future of Road Cycling”. Suggestions include (but are clearly not limited to) a more coherent calendar, a structural reform of the economics of pro cycling, and ‘safety scores’ for finish stretches in a bid to improve rider safety.

There’s also talk of a financial fairness mechanism like a budget or salary cap, carefully managed growth of women’s cycling, modernised fan engagement, and GPS trackers in races, and “data-led equipment rules”.

How did we get here? Why was the document needed? And, what concrete changes will actually arise from its creation? Let me answer those questions.

The background

In February, cycling's governing body launched a wide-ranging consultation on the future of road cycling, pithily called the "Future of Road Cycling".

The goal was to find ways to improve pro cycling, and to make it sustainable. Race organisers, riders, teams, other stakeholders and their umbrella bodies were all asked to contribute.

It is now September, and on Friday morning, a press release plopped into my inbox sent by the UCI, promising a consultation that reveals a "broad consensus on safety, financial fairness, the calendar, and commercial and media rights". Along with this, an 8,000 word, “summary” of the main themes of the consultation was sent out, and I have now read all of it. It is quite the Friday page-turner, and has already been presented to members of the UCI Management Committee at the UCI Road World Championships in Montréal.

There's a lot in there, with 55 different 'stakeholders' (a horrible word) responding with detailed contributions, including Rapha and The Cyclists' Alliance, both of which we've heard from already. Interestingly, 26 race organisers responded, but not ASO, the organisers of the Tour de France, Vuelta a España and Paris-Roubaix and others, and RCS, the organisers of the Giro d'Italia. While they were covered by their umbrella body, perhaps they think everything is working for them at the moment.

Also, shout out to Niamh Fisher-Black, Simon Carr, Juliette Berthet, Jordan Jegat, Jonas Hem Hvideberg and the riders of Uno-X Mobility, and Océane Mahé, all of whom responded individually to the consultation, rather than relying on their teams or unions to do the responding for them. Good to see there are some engaged riders in the peloton.

Everything boils down to five "pillars": the calendar and participation (competition format, events calendar, organisation of the racing and team pyramid, participation rules, internationalisation of cycling, and development obligations); the economic model (management of commercial rights; creation of new commercial rights and sharing of the value created; solidarity between levels; financial rules; regulations on rider transfers); fan engagement (digital platform; promotion; TV production; integration of AI and new technologies); safety (race course; behaviour; equipment; new technologies); and integrity of results (officiating consistency; anti-doping; technological fraud).

There are essentially a lot of suggestions, which may or may not see the light of day, although this does appear to be a start, a solid jumping off point. The authors write: "The UCI is open to seriously considering these proposals, and the next step will be exactly that: in-depth, collaborative stakeholder consultation to turn the most promising ideas into a consensual, durable model for the future of professional road cycling."

CALENDAR AND PARTICIPATION

The calendar and participation is the pillar that drew the most responses, with submissions calling for a more coherent calendar, built on geographical blocks, which makes sense. The summary talks of fewer overlaps and a clearer seasonal narrative, which is something that I've been calling for for a while, and is an area which has seen some success, with the Vuelta Femenina moving to after the men's Vuelta a España next year, for example. There were also proposals for shorter stage races and a revised points system, along with new participation obligations for teams.

ECONOMICS

On the economics of pro cycling, the part that has been the subject of heated debate, there was a lot suggested, with the consultation revealing "a clear will, shared by all stakeholders, in favour of structural reform". How that actually happens is the million dollar question, with the One Cycling project a thing of the past; Chris Marshall-Bell and Escape have reported that a new project, called the Collective Cycling Group is in the wings, bringing together teams trying to reform pro cycling.

The UCI consultation reads: "Contributors converge on a shared diagnosis: cycling’s revenues do not reflect its global popularity, teams typically depend on a single title sponsor and secondary sponsors for over 90% of their budget, and organiser cost escalation is outpacing revenue growth. Organisers generally support the concept of a shared commercial venture to maximise revenue."

That is fair, but how that happens is a mystery, especially without the cooperation of cycling's most important race organiser, ASO, and the Tour de France. The UCI authors write: "The UCI also specifies that it recognises the commercial rights of existing organisers, and that any system for pooling rights will be based on voluntary participation and shared governance." That roadblock might prevent any wholesale reform, then.

However, there was a lot of talk in the submissions of consolidation of commercial and media rights and some kind of financial fairness mechanism, so perhaps these are not utopian ideals and there is some kind of consensus on these being useful to the sport. Work on agent regulation and the transfer system is already underway, the UCI says. Interestingly, it also shoots down a franchise-system based WorldTour as it "is something that is contrary to the European sporting model and the sporting philosophy promoted by the UCI, and will not be contemplated".

FAN ENGAGEMENT

In terms of fan engagement, there is "genuine optimism that cycling can convert its large but passive audience into active, loyal fandom, and that the tools to do so largely already exist". A unified digital platform is one suggestion for this, as well as standardised and better-quality data, as well as "calendar legibility". The growth of women's cycling is seen as a key area for expansion, as long as the "structural pitfalls" of men's cycling are avoided, which is interesting.

SAFETY

It is no surprise that safety was the biggest concern for the riders who responded to the consultation. Apparently, the problems and credible solutions are largely agreed upon, and the UCI has a lot of the "necessary infrastructure" through its SafeR programme. GPS tracking rears its head here again, as well as safer race courses, and fewer vehicles at races. Cattily, the UCI report reads: "The UCI regrets that certain stakeholders claim safety is their priority while making decisions that contradict that objective."

Suggestions for this include addressing course design, safety scoring for the final kilometres of routes, mandatory rider safety education, as well as reducing speeds through "data-led equipment rules". The UCI has already attempted the latter, through rules on the width of handlebars, and an attempt to introduce gear restrictions.

INTEGRITY OF RESULTS

On integrity of results, the submissions largely were about better officiating, modernising anti-doping, and tackling technological fraud. Proposals included a VAR-style thing for commissaires, and using AI to find anomalies in biological passports.

'HEALTHY TENSION' ALL ROUND

That's the report, with a lot of agreement clear, but also "areas of healthy tension – most notably the balance between generating new revenue and redistributing it, and the sequencing of cost control versus value-sharing". Those areas of healthy tension remain difficult to resolve. It remains to be seen what the next steps are, or if anything will be implemented.

UCI president David Lappartient had this to say: "Road cycling is currently experiencing unprecedented growth. That success comes with responsibilities: to identify new areas for progress and to write the next chapter of our sport together. The first of these responsibilities is safety. It is not negotiable, and it will move forward at an even faster pace than the other parts of the reform.

"The result of this consultation is remarkable, both in the diversity and the quality of the responses received. What unites the different families of cycling is far more important than what can sometimes divide them. The report presented today lays the groundwork for the thorough, collaborative work still ahead of us as we build a new model for our sport. I warmly thank everyone who took part in this consultation, and I am confident about our continued work together."

Spanish sports director Eleuterio Anguita Hinojosa was expelled from the UCI Road World Championships in Montréal after driving excessively fast during the junior men's road race – so much so that his car briefly left the ground.

A former professional rider in the 1990s and a veteran of 12 Grand Tours, Anguita Hinojosa was fined 1,000 Swiss francs (around €1,060) after the incident. Video of the incident was captured by a roadside spectator, and shows Anguita Hinojasas driving very fast along a straight length of road, between barriers thronging with fans. At one stage the car hits a bump in the road and the rear wheels leave the road – to the clear astonishment of the onlooking spectators.

Anguita Hinojosa was listed in the post-race communiqué as having breached Article 2.12.007.6.3, regulations or guidelines concerning vehicles movements during the race. The UCI's regulations say drivers should "drive in a prudent manner to safeguard the safety of riders in the race, spectators and other vehicles".

Despite Anguita Hinojosa's explusion from the race, the Spanish junior team will leave Montréal with a swagger, after Benjamin Noval of Spain came away with two gold medals. He took the first in the junior men's time trial on Tuesday, which saw him beat Belgium's Vic de Smet by six seconds over the 20.3km course.

Two days later in the junior men's road race – the same race which saw Anguita Hinojosas's driving antics – Noval took his second gold. The 17-year-old, who is signed to Netcompany-Ineos on a two-year contract, beginning next year, soloed away on the final lap of the 134km race. He held off runner-up Simon Defrance of France by 42 seconds, while the chasing group was led in 2:12 down, by Sweden's Elias Wandel for the bronze medal.

Noval, who is the son of Lance Armstrong's former domestique at Discovery Channel and Astana of the same name, will consider his victories recompense for the heartache he suffered last year in Kigali, when he crashed in the final three kilometres while looking like a cert for a medal – perhaps even gold.

A motor-paced event will be reintroduced to the UCI Track World Championships next year after more than three decades off the programme.

Stayer racing, which involves six riders drafting behind motorbikes at speeds of up to 100kph, was last included in the Track Worlds in 1994, and will return to the championships in Paris, France in 2027.

The news came at the end of a wide-ranging UCI press release earlier this week, and took members of the motor-pacing community by surprise.

“It literally has just come out of the blue,” said Paul Curran, a four-time British stayer champion who competed in the event at the 1994 Worlds in Palermo, Italy. “I wasn’t expecting anything. There’s been no rumours of it or anything.”

“I thought it was a joke at first,” said UK race organiser Graham Bristow, a stalwart of the motor-pacing community. “Obviously I’m very pleased about it. I just wish it hadn’t been so long before they reinstated it… For the last 30 years, everyone’s been telling me it’s dead.”

Dating back to the late 19th century, stayer racing is a “totally different animal” to the more widely practised derny racing, Bristow explained; pacers stand up to create a bigger draft, and straddle larger motorbikes, equipped with a roller at the back pressing against which the rider races. The rider’s bike is also adapted with a smaller front wheel (24-inch) and reversed fork blades.

Due to the specialist equipment required, stayer racing is not widely practised, but is still prominent across mainland Europe, particularly in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.

German riders won this year’s men’s and women’s UEC Track Stayer European Championships, held in Italy in July, in finals that lasted 40 minutes for the men and 30 for the women – a format likely to be copied at the Track Worlds.

Former British derny champion Dannie Watkinson placed sixth at the recent Euros, in the first final ever held at the championships for women. “I’d absolutely love to race at the World Champs for the stayer,” she said. “That would be such an experience, and I think it’s amazing that they’ve added it into the OG World Champs and not made it a separate event.

“It really grows the general public’s knowledge of it,” Watkinson added.

Similarly, former two-time British derny champion Matt Gittings, who has been stayer racing since 2012, has his sights on competing at next year’s Worlds. Asked how he reacted to the announcement of the event’s inclusion, he said: “That wasn’t on my bingo card… It’s a really unique and crazy discipline. It’s been such a small, little niche in cycling. It’s cool it’s going to be on the world stage.”

The fastest speed Gittings has reached on a stayer bike is 111kph, recorded on a 400m outdoor track in Germany. “The average speeds are normally around 75kph [on larger outdoor tracks],” he explained. “On a smaller [250m] indoor track, like the one at the Worlds, it’s going to be more like 65 to 70kph.”

These speeds, combined with large, heavy motorbikes, have raised some safety concerns. One international track coach, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Cycling Weekly the event’s inclusion in the Track Worlds “feels like a recipe for disaster”.

“I know it’s happened before, but when you put the chance of a rainbow jersey on the line, people are going to make decisions that they might not normally make,” they said.

There have also been questions raised about the event’s accessibility due to the need for specially adapted bikes – derny racing, on the other hand, is practised on standard bunch bikes.

“The stayer is going to be more spectacular,” said Gittings. “There’s more noise, it’s bigger, it’s faster, and it was traditionally in the World Championships in the past. I think that’s the reason [the UCI] chose stayer over derny.”

The UCI is yet to release information about the qualification process for the stayer event. The finals will be held some time between 26-30 August during the track competition at next year's 'Super Worlds'.

As the countdown begins, what can fans expect? “It’s a bit like a fairground ride,” said Curran, looking back on his experience as the last generation of stayer racers at the Worlds.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ridden, but it’s the most exhilarating and fun thing I’ve ever done on a bike as well. It’s rattling round at speeds you shouldn’t really be doing. It always felt a bit naughty to me.”

Feature image courtesy of Tim Rademacher, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

This Sunday, a bike race will take place in the Yorkshire Dales that is widely considered – by anyone who has ever been anywhere near it – to be the hardest one-day event in Britain. And probably well beyond.

It’s so nuts, there is some debate, even amongst former winners, about whether the 3-Peaks Cyclo-Cross race is actually a biking event at all. It's mostly off road, on very lumpy and technical terrain, but straight bars, suspension and chunky tyres are all strictly banned. At least six kilometres of the 67km (38-mile) course are deemed utterly unrideable, even by the organisers (who, to be fair, are famous for doing their own race).

Veterans of the event train for the race by carrying their bikes for miles, and it attracts almost as many runners as it does cyclists. Besides rough riders from all over the world – including Australian EF Education-EasyPost rider Lachlan Morton, back for his third attempt at glory – this year, the field will feature at least one elite triathlon, double gold-medal winning Olympian Alistair Brownlee, plus ultra-running tough guy Tom Evans, the current 3-Peaks fell-running champ.

“Is it a bike race?” muses reigning women’s champ and three-time winner Bryony Halcrow when Cycling Weekly asks her to define the 3-Peaks Challenge. “Is it a running race? What kind of race is it?”

On balance she decides it is primarily a cycling challenge, but for Halcrow – who considers herself a fell runner above all else, and tells me that she doesn’t enter many bike races – the difficulty is definitely part of the appeal. “It’s just really good fun,” she says.

“The atmosphere is amazing. Like, at the bottom of Ingleborough, everyone's there, crowding around. At the bottom of Ribblehead, the same thing happens. There's people out on the hill, everyone's cheering you on. It's so different from anything else. There are road bits, there are bits that you can't ride, there's bits that you can ride… it's just got everything that no other race has."

According to local lore, the race was born in 1959, when Kevin Watson, a 14-year-old lad from Skipton, rode a circuit of the Yorkshire Three Peaks – Whernside, Ingleborough and Pen-y-Ghent – in six hours and 45 minutes.

Two other local riders, John Rawnsley and Harry Bond, subsequently turned Watson’s rugged route into an organised race, with the first iteration of the 3-Peaks Cyclo-Cross challenge being held in 1961. Rawnsley won, went on to organise the first 50 races (many of which he also took part in), and stayed involved until he passed away in 2019.

The race has attracted and produced some genuine legends, including Nick Craig, who won in 1991, 2009 and 2011, and Rob Jebb who, between the year 2000 and 2022, bagged an extraordinary 13 victories (the Jebb name appears again in this year’s start list). Louise Robinson has the record number of wins in the women's race, with five victories between 2002 and 2011, and she also holds the female course record, but Halcrow is hot on her heels on both counts.

Over the years the race has evolved slightly and grown considerably, with the original route being 25-miles (40km) long, but it remains steeped in history and tradition, which is partly why it’s so tough, with anything even vaguely resembling a mountain bike completely banned.

This year the rules have been relaxed slightly to allow 40mm tyres to be used (anything up to 40-622 / 700 x 38C is now permitted), so there will be more gravel bikes among the cyclo-cross steeds than ever before, but splayed bars (let alone straights) are still strictly banned. And there’s no getting away from the hike-a-bike element of the event.

"There's nothing else like it,” says last year's winner Jenson Young, who fought off a challenge from Lachlan Morton to set a new course record in 2025.

“To prepare for it, you've got to do specific things that you wouldn't do for any other race. There's such a variety of terrain. You could be a really good fell runner or really good at going up, but that doesn't mean you can do technical descents on a bike. Everyone struggles at something on the course – no one like excels at everything, which makes it pretty interesting.

“The first year I did it, I was really specifically doing running training and interval sessions. And then I realised that, actually, that approach didn't make me quicker at going up the hills. What you need is the ability to power walk up steep steps with a bike on your shoulder. The second year I did it, all my training was just walking up steep hills with weights or my bike on my back."

Young will miss this year's 3-Peaks, because he is heading to Australia to compete in the Gravel World Championships, but the guy who was on his heels last year, Lachlan Morton, is travelling in the other direction, and will be a big contender this year.

Like fell-running, there is a big community culture around the race. Will Scholey, who races at national level, took part in the race last year for the first time, and placed an impressive 14th in a large and competitive field, but it's been in his blood for years.

"It's right on my back doorstep, as I live just down the road in Settle, where my Dad's bike shop is," he explains. The bikeshop in question, 3-Peaks Cycles, has sponsored the race it takes its name from for the last ten years.

"Every year, Dad and I have gone up to watch. It's always been a goal of mine, and I always said to Dad that when I was old enough, I was going to do it," Will continues.

"I did it for the first time last year, aged 19. Unfortunately it didn't go my way – my descending was far from up-to-scratch, and I cramped the whole way down Whernside and whole way up Pen-y-Ghent. I hadn't quite got my nutrition right.

"I've only done it once, but it was the best race I did last year. I really enjoyed it, and I instantly wanted to come back for more, and to do better, which is what I'm hoping to do this year.

"It's called the world's hardest cyclo-cross race for a reason. It's a challenge, but it's a fun challenge. It takes in everything from road riding to grassy descents, riding down slabs downhill mountainbike style, hike-a-bike sections, especially up Simon Fell, which is close to vertical."

The technicality of the course, the steep nature of the terrain and the quality of the entrants all combine to make this a highly challenging event, but the elements can also play a big role in how the race pans out. Not that conditions overly bother everyone.

"I haven't actually looked at the weather yet," admits Halcrow. "If it was absolutely horrible, I think I'd survive better, compared to other people because I go fell-running out in foul conditions all the time."

In the absence of the reigning champion Tadej Pogačar, and on a course that suits his explosivity, Britain’s Tom Pidcock is looking forward to his “best shot so far” at winning the UCI Road World Championships on Sunday.

The 27-year-old is among the favourites for the elite men’s road race in Montreal, Canada, which stretches 273.4km and counts 12 laps of a punchy city-centre circuit. He placed 6th on a similar course at the Grand Prix de Montréal earlier this month, a result that gave him confidence ahead of his fifth elite Road Worlds.

“It’s definitely a course that suits me, that’s for sure,” Pidcock told Cycling Weekly and other media in a round table interview earlier this week.

“I think it’s a course that also favours saving for one big move. If you ride it attritionally and make efforts all the time then I think, in the end, it’s difficult to make the proper difference, to get people off your wheel. The climb’s not very steep.”

Following the GP de Montréal, Pidcock travelled to Colorado in the US for some last-minute altitude training. He arrived back in the Canadian city on Thursday evening, in what he feels is “really good” form.

“I did some VO2 efforts at 2,500m for the first time ever, and I actually managed to do them, so that must be quite a good thing,” he said. “But in one-day races, you can get it wrong, even if you feel good leading into it.

“I think becoming road world champion would be something that would be truly amazing in my career. It’s going to be so hard to win. I think this is my best opportunity so far in my career, that’s for sure.

“But having said that, I think the depth is so deep I might not even stand on the podium. I think it’s quite an open race, and even having said that, it’s my best shot so far.”

Part of Pidcock’s increased chances comes due to the non-attendance of Slovenia’s Pogačar, the winner of the last two road world titles, who is recovering from neck and collarbone fractures suffered in a crash at the Vuelta a España last month.

Asked if Pogačar’s absence will make the race more open, Pidcock said: “100%. I wouldn’t know who to bet on now. If Tadej was racing, I would have bet on him.”

Instead, the Briton singled out two other favourites. “I think the two stand-out guys are [France’s Paul] Seixas and [Mexico’s Isaac] Del Toro,” he said, also citing time trial world champion Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) as a rider who will “for sure be good”.

As for Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) and Wout van Aert (Belgium), two names that feature prominently on contenders lists, Pidcock believes the amount of climbing – 3,800m – makes it “not their perfect course. But they will still do well, I have no doubt about that.”

Already this season, Pidcock has won five times for his trade team, Pinarello Q36.5. He also finished ninth at the Tour de France, and earned his second career mountain bike world title.

He will lead the British squad in the men’s road race alongside Adam Yates, his former team-mate at Ineos Grenadiers, now of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, and winner of the GP de Montréal in 2023.

“[Adam and I] kept trying to have a call [to discuss leadership tactics] and then it kept getting cancelled. People were on flights and recons and all sorts of things, but no, we will discuss it,” Pidcock said.

“It’s no different to any other race. Adam has won Montréal before, he’s got a lot of experience, and has also been part of the winning team [at the GP de Montréal] for the past five years. He’s very experienced on this course.”

The eight-rider British squad also includes Oscar Onley, Fred Wright, Callum Thornley, Mark Donovan, James Shaw and Finlay Pickering.

The elite men’s road race is the final event of this year’s UCI Road World Championships and is scheduled to start at 9am local time (2pm BST) on Sunday 27 September.

The return of a retiree to top-flight road competition is hardly unheard of – Anna van der Breggen is currently having a lot of success in the Women's WorldTour doing exactly that. But the below-the-radar approach Michael Woods has taken has both surprised and delighted fans as he prepares to finish his road career properly, the way he originally wanted to, in Montréal.

The 39-year-old (he'll be 40 in three weeks) will line up on the Canadian team for the men's elite road race on Sunday. It is, he says, a "movie script" ending to a story that 12 months ago left him devastated, after surgery on a hernia left him unable to go full circle and sign off in the Québéçois city.

Woods turned to ultra-racing at the end of last year, and has since ridden Unbound and Leadville, as well as tried his hand at SkiMo – ski mountaineering. But he kept the Worlds dream bubbling under all the while.

"I decided that I'd try and keep the the option open, but I didn't want to make any commitments until later on in the year because I wasn't sure how my fitness would be, not racing the WorldTour for an entire year," he told Cycling Weekly. "I kept training, and I'd say by the halfway point of this year, I felt like I wasn't in amazing shape, but I felt like if I did a big push, I could still get back to a level where I'd be competitive."

Woods has already made that happen, with a major six-week training block that piggybacked on a chunk of altitude work at Leadville. He's maintained ties with his former NSN Cycling team (Israel-Premier Tech when Woods was in contract), and has been training with riders including Jake Stewart, George Bennett and Corbin Strong. Woods was nervous going into the Québec-Montréal double-header two weeks ago, he says, but going on his performances, his former team-mates appear to have licked him into shape. He was 66th at the GP de Québec, but at the GP de Montréal, where he was 18th, "went as well as I could ever have expected," he said.

Predictably, the Canadian fans have welcomed Woods back like a returning hero – give or take a few grumbles, he says, about his Worlds selection – "But that's why I was really happy to have raced well in Montréal, I felt like I justified my my place," he said.

"It's always cool racing at those races, Montréal particularly. There's just so many fans, and you feel so much love. It's cool," he adds.

And the fans aren't all that's welcoming Woods back to the Canadian city; his Worlds ride will also be presided over by an enormous mural – of himself. To no small amount of ensuing controversy, Woods's former Israel-Premier Tech boss Sylvan Adams has the image of the rider painted on the side of a 10-storey building he owns. The controversy arose from the fact it was painted over a previous image of former Israel-Premier Tech rider Hugo Houle, who is a Quebeçois, no less.

Woods remains diplomatic, though. Adams, he says, changed his life by enabling him to turn pro, and says he considers the mural an honour, if a little surreal.

"It's a big mural – it's quite impressive. I didn't realise it was that big until I saw it," Woods told CW. "It's crazy, especially considering I started my career really in Montréal. I connected with Sylvan in 2013, and he really enabled me to become a pro cyclist. He gave me $15,000 and enabled me to quit my job when I first started, and it changed my life. So having started my career in Montréal and now coming back, finishing it here with a giant mural of me there, it's just wild. I don't think you'd write a better movie script."

Aside from his comeback-by-stealth, Woods has one more surprise in store when I ask him who is the big favourite for Sunday's men's race. After name-checking Isaac Del Toro of Mexico ("he's got to be one of the big favourites"), he adds, "Mathieu van der Poel's been playing things down, however, I think he's actually the guy to beat. The climb's hard, but I've seen him get over climbs that are much harder.

"Even a guy like Wout van Aert," adds Woods. "I mean, Wout's had such an amazing Vuelta. He's got to be a factor. I mean that's the beauty of there not being a [Tadej] Pogačar in this race – and it's unfortunate that he's not here – but the race opens up quite a bit."

As for his own aims for this last hurrah, Woods says: "A top-20 would be amazing. I think that'd be a really cool way to finish things off – and ideally try and be active in the race and show the maple leaf off… and have a great race."

The men's elite World Championships road races take place this Sunday, 27 September, with the women's the day before.

The UCI Road World Championships will head to India for the first time in 2032, it was announced on Wednesday evening in Canada.

At a meeting of the UCI Congress at the current Worlds in Montréal, it was officially decided that the world's most populous country would host cycling's blue riband event for the first time.

The Worlds will take place in Pune, a city in the central west of the country, south west of Mumbai, in 2032, in the state of Maharashtra. The region hosted India's first-ever UCI ranked stage race, the Bajaj Pune Grand Tour, in January this year.

It will be just the fourth time that the Worlds will take place in Asia, with Abu Dhabi hosting the event in 2028, after Japan in 1990 and Qatar in 2016. Ahmedabad in India is also currently one of the forerunners for the 2036 Olympic Games. UCI president David Lappartient, an IOC voting member, was also a key part behind the move for Kigali, Rwanda, to become the first African host of the Worlds in 2025.

At the same Congress, it was decided that Groningen and Drenthe in the Netherlands would host the 2034 combined Road and Para Cycling Road World Championships, after they failed in their bid to host the 2032 event. 2033 is still without a host city.

"I would like to thank all the National Federations gathered in Montréal for their commitment throughout the year," Lappartient said in a press release. "The hosts revealed today shape the map of world cycling for the years to come, and I am particularly delighted that India will host the UCI Road World Championships for the first time, in 2032. In a country that accounts for nearly a fifth of the world's population, this event can become a tremendous catalyst for both competitive cycling and everyday bike riding.

"I would also like to extend my warm congratulations to the five recipients of the UCI Merit, each of whom has, in their own way, helped advance cycling — including Serge Arsenault, whose history with our sport began right here, in Montréal, at the 1974 UCI Road World Championships."

Given the bicycle had yet to be invented, it's unlikely that Scots poet Robert Burns was thinking of place-to-place record rides when he wrote "The best laid schemes of mice and men", but he may as well have been.

'The most careful plans can go awry' is the sentiment, and record rider Kim Barfoot-Brace experienced this aphorism in motion at the weekend when, apparently against all the odds, she set a new provisional mark for the women's 'Side to Side'. Her 16hr 38min 20sec took 13min 36sec off Marina Bloom's 22-year-old previous best.

Run off under the auspices of the Road Records Association (RRA), the Side to Side takes riders across the 'waist' of Britain, from Pembroke in Wales to Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast – a distance, in theory, of 349 miles by road.

Barfoot-Brace (Eat Plants Not Pigs / Bath CC), a former Best British All-Rounder with multiple National 12-hour titles to her name, had been thinking about the Side to Side record, which runs close to her Bath home, for three years.

When Cycling Weekly caught up with the 45-year-old she was still recovering from the endeavour both mentally and physically. Her support crew, she said, had also suffered a "huge toll". Considerable previous experience with 12-hour time trialling had not prepared any of them for the challenges they would face.

"As much as you can plan your route and you've got this detailed schedule that you do for the RRA, there are so many things that crop up that you don't plan for," she said. "Within a 12-hour race, you're going round in a circuit. You've got your support crew. You've got loads of other people around. If things go wrong, you can get it fixed really quickly."

On the record ride though, on-the-go fixes became a real mental test. "Not just for me, but my support crew as well, and my husband. He's supported me so many times in the National 12, and he said this was next level. And I could tell that for the three of them, including the timekeeper, it had taken a huge toll," said Barfoot-Brace.

The hurdles the team had to face began even before the attempt began, with a road closure early on the route that forced a diversion. But that was the easy part. More difficult to deal with was her bike computer going into meltdown after five hours after she took a wrong turn. The spare bike – with her husband's spare computer – didn't help either. It had the same problem.

"I basically had no navigation on my bike computer from Abergavenny," she said. Neither did she have her power, or heart rate in front of her.

It meant she had to rely on the crew guiding her through the various cities along the way – Cheltenham, Oxford, Cambridge – as well as the other, unexpected, road closures they came across.

Having crossed into England and navigated Cheltenham with the crew's help, she said, "I just felt so disheartened. I was like, 'What is going on?' I already felt tired then."

Eventually her husband saved the day by editing the GPX file on his laptop so it worked, but more computer woes were still to come later, including an accidental switch to indoor mode that saw her bike computer lose all useful parameters, as well as indicate that she had fallen way down on schedule. It was the last straw, she said.

"Bear in mind that by this point, it was 10 hours in, something like that. So I just lost the plot," says Barfoot-Brace. "I was really confused, and I stopped, and I was crying and crying. I got the crew to stop behind me. And I was like, 'What am I doing? Am I completely wasting my time? I'm going backwards'.

"And they were like, 'No, no, it's still possible. It's still possible'," she says. "And while I wasted some time in that panic and talking to them about it, it was kind of good because I was like, 'Right, like, I've had enough technology. I just, I'm not looking at anything.'"

There was one more complex and unexpected detour to come, plus, she says, "a bit of a panic attack" after losing the crew on a particularly scary junction of duel carriageways around Cambridge. ("Some of those roads are terrifying," she says). But once through the eastern university city, Great Yarmouth was almost near enough for the aroma of fish and chips to carry on the wind.

"I just thought, right, I know where I'm going now, that's it, head down. And I just absolutely nailed it the last few hours," says Barfoot-Brace. "I had moments, like, oh god, my saddle sores, and then my feet, and whatever. But I was just so focused. I thought, I cannot not get this record."

Despite all the difficult moments, there were good ones, too. There was support from family, from old teammates, and also fellow RRA record breakers Chris Murray, and Lee Williams, who holds the men's Side to Side mark at 14hr 00min 40sec. "Every time I saw them I was in tears," she says.

Barfoot-Brace describes the record ride as "against the odds", and very different to the picture she had in her head beforehand of being "blown from one side of the country to the other" on a 23mph average. In the end she averaged just under 21.43mph (34.5kph) for a ride that included an extra seven-and-a-half miles thanks to all the deviations required.

Given it didn't go half as smoothly as it could have done, you could forgive Barfoot-Brace for feeling as though there is unfinished business with the Side to Side. Indeed, she says, if she were to make another place-to-place attempt, it would probably be to repeat this one. She feels, she says, a lot of affinity with the course. For now though, after thinking about doing it for three years, she is happy just to have done it.

"I didn't really think it would happen this year after some of the other things that popped up," she says. "It feels really good actually – and I'm sure my family agree – that I've got it done, and I'm not going to talk about it anymore."

“I was on the bus with the Visma guys, like with Wout van Aert and Pascal Eenkhoorn, and really from then, all I've aspired to do is to race for Visma one day, and hopefully ride the Tour de France with them.”

Xander Graham is reflecting on an extraordinary day five years ago, which burns bright in his memory, when, during stage seven of the 2021 Tour of Britain, he kept pace with a breakaway group as they rode towards his hometown of Edinburgh. Aged just 12 at the time, he was rewarded for his efforts by being handed a bidon by Eenkhoorn, who was then riding for Jumbo-Visma, and was later invited to meet the team. The video clip of the moment went viral, but now the story has gone almost full circle.

Now 17, Graham still has that bidon and knows exactly where it is (“on a shelf in my garage”). But as of this week, he also has something else, something that is putting him within touching distance of the dream he’s been holding onto for the last five years: a contract with JEGG-SKIL-DJR, a Dutch team who are directly affiliated with Visma-Lease a Bike.

“I was already a fan of Visma back then,” he tells Cycling Weekly. “But from that day onwards, it definitely made me love them, and they became my favourite team now. So, yeah, it really is like a dream come true.”

But it hasn’t come out of nowhere. In the intervening five years, Graham has been working hard to make his fream come true. A key member of the Yorkshire-based Prologue Cycling Team, he is halfway through a two-year programme with the Manchester Cycling Academy.

“I'm also a beneficiary of the Braveheart programme in Scotland,” he tells me. “The fund supports riders with funding for transport and costs, so they can get across to Europe to race, which is a massive help for me.”

As commentators Ned Boulting and Adam Blythe noted at the time, when they described the encounter as the best moment of the tour thus far, the Scottish youngster showed remarkable pace even as a pre-teen.

“I rode my bike from being four years old,” Xander tells me. “I used to do local mountain-bike dirt grits and then from there some cyclocross and a bit of road. From under-14 to under-16, I did every discipline – mountain biking, cyclocross, road and track – but for this last year, I've fully focused on road riding.”

And it has paid off. In spring this year, he was made aware of a young talent day being held by JEGG for under-19s.

“Loads of people applied, but I got through,” Xander explains. “Then we had to do testing in Belgium. Two or three weeks later I got a message from the head of JEGG, and he invited me to a training camp in Germany. After that he said that there was a space on the team for me.”

“I'll be based at home in Edinburgh, but I’ll fly out to races and training camps and stuff like that. I've got a training camp with them later in the year – that will be the first time that I’ll actually meet up with them.”

The long-running doping case against Colombian rider Miguel Ángel López has been "definitively closed", after the Swiss Federal Tribunal dismissed the rider's second appeal in the case, which concerns allegations dating back to the 2022 Giro d'Italia.

Then riding for Astana Qazaqstan, Ángel López was sanctioned for the "use and possession of a prohibited substance", which in this case was menotropin, a substance that can stimulate testosterone production.

Ángel López was initially banned for four years by the UCI's Anti-Doping Tribunal. The rider appealed this decision to CAS – the Court of Arbitration for Sport – which upheld the initial ban, and then took the case to the Federal Tribunal.

Now 32, the former winner of stages in the Vuelta a España and the Tour de France, argued that the UCI's use of evidence from a separate investigation violated his human rights. The ban originally came about after CELAD's Operaćion Ilex – an investigation into Spanish doctor Marcos Maynar, who was arrested in 2022 on drug trafficking allegations – which yielded evidence against Ángel López.

However, the Federal Tribunal did not agree, and once again the original four-year ban was upheld. Given he was originally dealt a ban in 2024 that was backdated to July 2023, the rider has already served a large amount of it – he will be free to ride again on 24 July next year.

As well as the ban, Ángel López was hit with a fine equal to 70% of his gross income for 2022, and the disqualification of all results between 3 May 2022 and 25 July 2023.

Writing on the X social media platform at the time of the initial sanction, Ángel López said: "In my understanding, the offence does not exist and the sanction is unjustified. I will appeal immediately before the UCI and defend my innocence as I have always done. I have faith that I will return to the world of professional cycling."

As well as his Grand Tour wins, Ángel López won the Tour de Suisse, Volta Catalunya and more. In theory, he will be able to return to the pro peloton next year, aged 33 and continue adding to his palmarès.

British cyclist Matthew Brennan has called for the creation of an independent safety body in cycling, saying it is “disgraceful” that “nothing has changed” following the death of Finlay Tarling.

Nineteen-year-old Tarling died on 14 August after he collided with a non-race vehicle driver that had entered the race course at the Volta a Portugal.

In an interview with BBC Sport published after Brennan won five stages of the Vuelta a España, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider said it was “unbelievable” and “shocking” that bigger measures hadn’t been introduced to road racing.

“It was very sad what happened with Fin. We were watching his funeral yesterday and I said to my friend, ‘It’s so sad we’ve lost someone so special and also nothing has changed’,” Brennan said.

"I really think that is disgraceful. Instead of someone somewhere in these organisations saying, ‘OK, this should never ever happen again’, it feels the world has moved on, nothing has changed and there’s events where cars have been on the course still.”

Less than three weeks after Tarling’s death, a rider had to swerve to avoid a public car on the barriered individual time trial course at the Sauerlandrundfahrt stage race in Germany.

“In my personal opinion, there should be an independent organisation that holds the organisations, the UCI and everything accountable to some very strict rules that makes sure the safety of the riders is held as a priority,” Brennan told BBC Sport.

In 2023, the UCI announced the creation of a safety body called ‘SafeR’, which is funded by the governing body, race organisers, riders and teams. The body has been responsible for recommending safety measures including the yellow card system, handlebar width restrictions and rider airbags.

Earlier this month, and in light of Tarling's death, the UCI called for safety tracking systems to be put in place across all professional road races “as quickly as possible”.

Tarling’s funeral took place last Thursday in Aberystwyth, Wales.

The teenager’s team, NSN Cycling, announced today that it has created an annual scholarship in the Welshman’s name, the Finlay Tarling Talent Development Scholarship, through which it will support one young Welsh cyclist every year for at least the next five years.

The scholarship comes in addition to a GoFundMe page set up by Tarling’s agent, Jamie Barlow, which has already surpassed £100,000 in donations. The funds will go towards helping future generations of Welsh cyclists.

For the fifth time in the UCI's 125-year existence, the UCI Road World Championships will take place on the continent of North America, in Canada's city of Montreal.

In total, there will be 13 different titles awarded across the week, which stretches between 20-27 September, with rainbow jerseys to be won in time trials and road races in the junior, under-23 and elite ranks.

Today (Saturday 27 September), we have the men's road race with Remco Evenepoel, Isaac Del Toro and Paul Seixas among the favourites. You can stream the races free on CBC Gem (Canada) and BBC iPlayer (UK) with a starting race time of 9am (Montreal time, ET).

Below, Cycling Weekly has gathered all the key information on broadcasters and live streams so you can watch the 2026 UCI Road World Championships wherever you are.

Quick guide to watching the UCI Road World Championships

• UK: BBC (free), TNT Sports / HBO Max (£30.99/mon)
• US: Flobikes (USD$39.99/mon)
• Canada: CBC Gem (free)
• Australia: Stan (from AUD$9.99/mon + AUD$20/mon sports add-on)
• Free streams: YouTube (geo-blocking applies), BBC (UK), RTBF (Belgium), France Télévisions (France), RAI (Italy), RTVE (Spain), NOS (Netherlands), CBC Gem (Canada)
• Anywhere: Unlock your free stream from anywhere with NordVPN (75% off)

Can I watch the UCI Road World Championships for free?

Across the globe, fans can watch the UCI Road World Championships for free thanks to broadcasters in their regions and the UCI's YouTube channel.

The YouTube feed is geo-restricted, so will not be available to residents in countries that already have a TV broadcast deal in place.

In the UK, as outlined above, the BBC is broadcasting the elite events, with free streaming available on BBC iPlayer and linear viewing on BBC Two and BBC Three.

CBC Gem will be showing the home broadcast in Canada with every event available on the streaming platform.

Elsewhere across Europe, France Télévisions (France), RTBF (Belgium), RAI (Italy), RTVE (Spain) and NOS (Netherlands) are a few more of the public broadcasters who will be showing the championships. The full list is available online on page 11 of the the UCI's technical guide for the event.

Coverage is geo-restricted, so if you're away from home right now, you'll need a VPN to get your usual coverage while abroad – more on that below.

How to watch UCI Road World Championships 2026 from anywhere

Most streaming platforms have geo-restrictions these days, which means they only work in certain countries. But being locked out of the races is a thing of the past thanks to a VPN.

A Virtual Private Network is a piece of internet security software that can alter your device's location, so you can unblock your usual streaming services, even when you're abroad.

Our expert colleagues at TechRadar rate NordVPN as the best on the market for its security, compatibility, streaming credentials and, right now, its value for money...

Want to know more? We have an explainer on the benefits, costs, and considerations of using a VPN...
– Should I use a VPN to watch cycling?

How to watch the UCI Road World Championships in the UK

In the UK, this year's UCI Road World Championships will be shown live and free on the BBC, the country's public service broadcaster.

BBC Two will have linear coverage of the Women's Time Trial while BBC Three will show the Men's Time Trial and Road Race.

Those wanting to watch all 13 events can do so by subscribing to TNT Sports. TNT Sports is available via HBO Max, with the cheapest package priced at £25.99 a month across a 12-month term.

How to watch the UCI Road World Championships in the USA and Canada

In the US, Flobikes has been granted the broadcast rights for the Road World Championships. Subscriptions for US viewers cost USD$39.99 a month, or USD$155.88 for the year.

The Flobikes TV app is available on Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast and Apple TV, as well as on iOS and Android.

In Canada, you will need CBC Gem (English coverage) or TVA Sports (French coverage) to watch the action from Montreal. All 13 races will be available on the platform.

How to watch the UCI Road World Championships in Australia

Cycling fans in Australia can watch the Road World Championships on the Stan Sport streaming service.

The most basic plan costs AUD$9.99 a month, but viewers will need to have the Stan Sport add-on to watch the Road World Championships, which costs an additional AUD$20 per month.

What to expect at the UCI Road World Championships

The 2026 UCI Road World Championships will mark the event's 99th edition, the first taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1921.

This year, the event will be held in North America for the fifth time in history, the third time in Canada, and the second time in Montreal. The road races will look familiar to fans of pro cycling, due to the course following much the same route as the WorldTour race GP de Montréal, albeit a lot longer.

The road races are wide open, especially in the absence of defending men's champion Tadej Pogačar, who crashed out of the Vuelta a España last month. The best women in the world will all be hoping to grab the rainbow bands after last year's surprise winner in Canada's Magdeleine Vallieres.

Riders will tackle a lumpy 13.4km circuit around Mount Royal Park, which the women will tackle eight times, the men 12. Unlike the GP Montréal though, which was held last weekend, the Worlds courses have a significant lead-in before beginning the first full lap of Mount Royal. This amounts to around 60km for the women, 112km for the men and will bolster the full course distances to 180km and 273km respectively. The total ascent for both men's and women's is significant, with the women climbing 2,570m and the men, 3,808m.

Before the elite races, the 80km Junior Women's race, which loops the park six times, amasses 1,614m of climbing. There will be no respite, and whoever wins here will have earned it and then some.

The Junior Men's course is longer again at 134km, racking up 2,690m of climbing over 10 laps. That is replicated by the U23 women's race, while the U23 men go longer still, with their 13 laps meaning they will have clocked up a thigh-busting 3,497m of vertical ascent.

The Worlds begin with the time trials, with the elite races taking place over the same course and distance on Sunday 20 September. The 39.2km course will see 220m of elevation, so it is pretty much a pure rouleur's event, although there are some technical elements.

The under-23 and junior events take place mid-week, along with the mixed relay time trial, which is 40.7km with 290m of elevation.

UCI Road World Championships 2026 event schedule

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For the next week, 20–27 September, the Canadian city of Montréal will be hosting the 2026 UCI Road World Championships. I’ve just been to visit, scoping out Québec’s biggest city before the best cyclists on the planet (well, those that aren’t injured) arrive in town and turn everything on its head.

So, whether you’re visiting to watch the worlds, or spectating from afar, here are a dozen things you should know about Montréal.

1. This isn’t the first time the UCI Road World Championships has been staged in Montréal – the city also hosted the Worlds back in 1974, which was an extra significant event because it was the first time the prestigious championships had been held outside of Europe. That year Eddy Merckx took the rainbow jersey, completing a Triple Crown (having already won the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France that year.

2. The name of the city derives from the volcanic hill that towers over it, Mount Royal, around the flanks of which the 2026 World Championships course wends. When the worlds isn’t happening here, these same roads and various gravel tracks that spin off them are popular with local riders. The first European to climb to the summit, led by local First Nation people, was Jacques Cartier du Couvreur on 2 October 1535, and it was he who called the peak Mont-Royal, from which the city of Montréal took its name.

3. Montréal was officially founded on 17 May 1642, making the city considerably older than the country of Canada, which only came into being on 1 July 1867.

4. The streetscape of Montréal is covered in spectacular graffiti and giant murals, including – until very recently – one depicting Hugo Houle, the second Canadian and first Quebecer to win a stage of the Tour de France, dedicating his 2022 victory to his brother, Pierrik, who was killed in 2012 by a hit-and-run driver. But, on the very eve of the Worlds coming to Quebec, the painting of Houle has controversially been replaced by one of fellow Canadian cyclist Michael Woods (who is from Ontario) celebrating his 2024 Vuelta a España stage win. The mural is on the side of a building owned by Sylvan Adams, the Israeli-Canadian owner of the Israel-Premier Tech team both men rode for.

5. The best bar food in Montréal is a dish called poutine, which is basically chips in gravy with spring onions and cheese curds – it’s not the prettiest meal in the world, but it’s delicious, goes well with the equally wonderful local IPAs and is brilliant for carb-loading if you’re going cycling (although we doubt Wout van Aert or Demi Vollering will be scoffing too much of it the night before their big rides).

6. Also, bagels. Montréal is famous for its world-class bagels, especially Fairmount Bagels, baked in wood-fired ovens in the funky suburb of Le Plateau, beneath Mont-Royal. These are the best post-ride feast imaginable.

7. Protected bike lanes spider all around the streets of Montréal, including some Copenhagen-style ones, there are dedicated bike streets and the city has an excellent shared-bike system called BIXI. I also found drivers to be disarmingly polite compared to those in most other cities – perhaps because of this campaign about road-crossing awareness that ran a few years ago.

8. Like Manhattan, Montréal is an island. The city is surrounded on all sides by the waters of the magnificent St Lawrence River which, further downstream, opens up into the immense Gulf of St Lawrence.

9. You can spot black squirrels in Montréal and the city is also home to bin-raiding racoons and cheeky chipmunks, which can be seen around Mount Royal, in Parc Jean-Drapeau and various other green spaces.

10. Over 30km of subterranean tunnels burrow beneath the surface of Montréal, so you can navigate the city in comfort even in mid-winter, when temperatures can plummet to -20°C. Sadly, cycling is not allowed in these underground passageways.

11. One of the most popular places for visiting cyclists to explore is Île Notre-Dame, a small island in the St Lawrence River reached via a bridge from Montréal, where you can ride around the track of the Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit, which is named after Gilles Villeneuve, a Canadian racing legend who was killed during the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix.

12. Montréal is sometimes known as the City of Saints, because of its many Catholic churches and cathedrals. But it’s also known as the City of Sin, because people flocked here for boozy weekends during the Prohibition era in the United States.

The former head of performance at British UCI Women’s Continental Team Hess Cycling, Ladislav Demko, has been banned for 10 years by cycling's governing body over breaches of its Code of Ethics.

In a press release on Friday afternoon, it was revealed that the UCI's Ethics Commission concluded that Demko's behaviour had "fallen short of the standards of integrity, care and diligence required of persons bound by the UCI Code of Ethics, and had involved an abuse of the position he held within the team".

He committed breaches of Articles 5 (General principles) and 6.4 (Protection of physical and mental integrity) of the UCI Code of Ethics, together with Article 2.1 (Psychological abuse) of Appendix 1. Article 2.6 (Minors and other dependent persons) of Appendix 1 was retained as an aggravating circumstance.

He was cited in particular for "the habitual use of aggressive and disrespectful language in the working environment, the unsafe and intimidating driving of team vehicles, and demeaning remarks concerning the physical appearance of staff and riders".

Hess Cycling existed between 2023 and 2025, and aimed to become "Britain's leading professional women's team" with the aim of competing in the Tour de France Femmes, but collapsed last season.

The proceedings came after several complaints were submitted by former staff members, and by a rider formerly coached by Demko "with whom he had a consensual personal relationship and with whom he cohabited, concerning allegations of harassment and psychological abuse".

The investigation collected evidence, heard complaints, and was "assisted by an independent external trauma-informed investigator engaged at its request", as well as hearing comments from Demko.

The press release reads: "Based on the elements brought to its attention, the Commission concluded that Mr Demko’s conduct towards the riders and staff of the team – in particular the habitual use of aggressive and disrespectful language in the working environment, the unsafe and intimidating driving of team vehicles, and demeaning remarks concerning the physical appearance of staff and riders – had fallen short of the standards of integrity, care and diligence required of persons bound by the UCI Code of Ethics, and had involved an abuse of the position he held within the team.

"The Commission further concluded that Mr Demko’s conduct towards the athlete he coached had involved acts of isolation – including requests to sever contact with persons she trusted, the dictation of the content of her messages to them, and a threatening message addressed to her psychologist –, humiliation by way of public denigration on social media, intimidation – including threats to disclose personal information and a threat directed against a person she trusted –, and infantilisation.

"These acts, which persisted after the end of their relationship, had the effect of diminishing her sense of identity, dignity and self-worth. The fact that the above conduct arose within a consensual personal relationship between two adults did not remove it from the scope of the UCI Code of Ethics, given the coaching and dependent relationship between Mr Demko and the rider."

"The Commission imposed a ban on Mr Demko from taking part in any cycling-related activity organised by the UCI or any of its affiliates for a period of 10 years, as well as a fine," the UCI added. "Mr Demko was further ordered to bear the costs of the proceedings.

"The UCI acknowledges the courage of the individuals who came forward in this matter, and recalls that any form of harassment or abuse is incompatible with the values of cycling."

The UCI accepted the decision of the Ethics Commission, which could still face an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Former world cyclo-cross champion Fem van Empel has reignited her road career – effective immediately – after nearly a year out of the sport.

Last December, the 24-year-old Dutch rider announced that she was putting her career on pause "for an indefinite period", having lost joy and motivation for the sport.

Her team at the time, Visma-Lease a Bike, said that they had done "everything possible" to persuade her to stay.

Van Empel, who had now taken up a place with FDJ United-SUEZ, said at the time: "During the Koppenbergcross, my body and mind gave a very clear signal. I am someone who doesn’t give up easily, but unconsciously, a decision had already formed then. This feels like the right step for me now."

"This is a well-considered decision that I feel good about," she added. "At the moment, both the motivation and the enjoyment I have had in cycling for years are missing. I wanted to be honest and fair about this with the team."

Now, though, the three-time elite cross world champion is raring to restart and make a go of it with the French team. Among her teammates there will be Tour de France Femmes champion Demi Vollering and emerging British star Lauren Dickson.

"I'm ready for a new adventure and really excited to start again from scratch," she said in an FDJ United-SUEZ Instagram post. "Above all, I want to have a lot of fun."

Van Empel has not raced since that day at the Koppenbergcross in the Netherlands, which she did not finish. Her last professional race on the road was the Choralis Fourmies Féminine, in mid-September last year.

FDJ United-SUEZ general manager Stephen Delacourt emphasised that the team would be doing everything it could to help Van Empel rediscover the joy in bike racing.

“Fem’s arrival means a lot to us,” he said. “We all know what a tremendous champion she is and everything she has already accomplished. But today, our priority is first and foremost to support her so that she can rediscover the joy of riding, her smile, and the freedom to fully express herself.”

The first races on her program have yet to be revealed.

A new museum entirely dedicated to British bike racing is being planned for a town in Nottinghamshire where one of the greatest professional bike racers Britain has ever produced spent his formative years.

As youngster, Tom Simpson delivered groceries around the houses of Harworth and the Bassetlaw district, but he would go on to become a road-racing world champion, Olympic and Commonwealth medallist and, in 1962, the first British rider to ever wear the leader's yellow jersey in the Tour de France.

Tragically, during the 13th stage of the 1967 Tour de France, 29-year-old Simpson collapsed and died during the climb of Mont Ventoux, having suffered heart failure, which was officially recorded as having been caused by exhaustion, but has also been blamed on the use of alcohol and amphetamines, a practise prevalent at the time. A monument is now located on the spot where he fell.

The new museum won’t be named after Simpson, but the location has been chosen specifically to honour him, as came to light this week, after Bassetlaw Labour MP Jo White revealed in an interview printed in the Doncaster Free Press that she had been involved in talks with the curators of the proposed British Cycle Racing Museum.

“There are cycling museums in the UK, but nothing dedicated to this telling the story of British racing," says Chris Sidwell, who says he came up with the concept of the museum, and also just happens to be Tom Simpson's nephew.

"Cycle racing is our most successful Olympic sport, our highest funded Olympic sport. It's the pinnacle. British men and women have won all the grand tours. And it's not celebrated anywhere [apart from] a little bit in Manchester.

“I thought that Harworth, the place where Thompson comes from, was the ideal place for it to be. This is where the British men's yellow jerseys story started."

The plans have evolved to go beyond simply a museum, as Sidwell explains. "It will also be a community centre that will encourage cycling. We've got all sorts of little bolt-ons. We trying to connect up to the national cycle network as well from the site. We've built a green wheel cycleway around Harworth.

"We're trying to make it a destination. It's going to become a cycling town. It was a coal mining town. We haven't got coal anymore, we've got cycling - so we're selling cycling."

When is an amazing view not an amazing view? When it is blighted by a rubbing disc brake, that's when. I spent three days last week riding around the coast of Kent in southern England, on the Cantii Way cycle route, it is, under most circumstances, rather lovely.

My experience of it would have been better, I'd imagine, if my rear brake hadn't started dragging heavily somewhere around the middle of the second day, without anything I could do about it. On our return the bike was banished to the naughty corner of the garage and is currently awaiting sale for scrap aluminium – unless my mood improves.

I'd heartily recommend the Cantii Way. It's not too challenging, it's an adventure and it's beautiful in places. Something else I'd heartily recommend is making sure your hydraulic disc brakes are not going to throw a wobbly halfway round. They need to not be just 'OK', or 'fine', but absolutely perfect. Either that or make sure you're carrying all the tools, all the spares, and a whole pannierful of patience.

At least 30 minutes of my adventure was spent with the bike upside down on a small patch of grass in central Hythe. Thirty minutes that were, it transpired, entirely wasted. Sadly, the lack of pliers, Q-tips and isopropyl alcohol in my panniers found me out. Given I'd spent 90 minutes the day before I left, cleaning sticky pistons and checking pad wear, I assumed I'd be OK. I was at first, but it didn't last.

Ultimately, the piston was stuck again, and would not be budged. I ended up riding the second half of the Cantii Way with a rear wheel that came to a stop in less than three rotations, even when spun heartily by hand. I tried not to think about it.

If you're still running rim brakes, feel free to ignore all this blathering. Unless you're very unlucky, your worst case braking-related scenario is that you run the pads too low. And that is pretty unlikely to happen, given how easy it is to check on wear even as you're riding. You can laugh at the hapless Hythe village disc brake idiot, safe in the knowledge you won't be found with the bike upside-down, swearing at the sky, messing about with miniscule hex keys and fiddly clips, expecting at any moment to feel a jet of warm DOT 5.1 decorate your face.

I should have known. After all, less than a week before I'd found myself with a bike upside-down – different bike this time, if you can believe that – in the grassy entrance to a Hampshire field, slowly covering myself with road filth as I inspected the remains of a rear disc brake pad assembly. Having taken out the rear wheel and employed a Torx key so small it could probably have doubled up for acupuncture purposes on my creaking back, I was finally able to make an unrepeatable but nevertheless accurate assessment of the situation.

One bit of metal had sheared off, missing in action; another was twisted beyond redemption, and the pads themselves appeared to have all the stopping power of a carpet slipper. At least I wasn't at the farthest point of a four-hour ride. Oh, hang on – Yes I was.

All this despite the fact that, would you believe, I'd checked pad wear before I left. That itself involved Houdini-like contortions as I craned to get the closest look that my ageing, long-sighted eyes would allow.

The pads had worn low enough, it transpired, that the retaining clip had caught on the disc and snapped. It was a long ride home with just a front brake.

Admittedly, if I'd been a bit more proactive on the pad replacement front, this particular incident could have been avoided. But at £10-£20 a wheel, these aren't the sort of items you want to discard prematurely.

There is no doubt that discs brakes are powerful, and offer remarkably good all-weather braking. Some would even have you believe they're largely maintenance free. They kind of are, but that doesn't mean you can just forget about them and hope everything will be OK. Two bikes in two rides have served as a salient reminder that, eventually that approach will bite you in the butt. And it will hurt.

All that said, I've just been reminded that Tadej Pogačar won Milan-San Remo this year with a rubbing disc brake – a race that was longer than my entire three-day trip on the Cantii Way.

I'll get me coat.

Tadej Pogačar has begun training again for the first time since the crash that took him out of the Vuelta a España while leading the race last month.

The five-time Tour de France champion posted a series of pictures and videos on instagram, showing him in a variety of situations, including riding the indoor trainer at home, as well as eating out and sharing an ice cream with girlfriend Urška Žigart (AG Insurance-Soudal), whose season also came to a premature end after a crash at the Faun Tour Femmes at the weekend.

"First time back," UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider says, as he is filmed riding the trainer. "Collarbone strong, head strong… super happy. Let's go!"

In the Instagram post itself he wrote: "Not quite how we planned to spend September. At least we have good company. A big thank you to our teams, families, friends and all of you for the amazing support. We are very grateful."

Pogacar rides indoors on UAE Team Emirates-XRG sponsor MyWhoosh, which timed his return to the saddle with a new series called Train with Tadej, which it says will give users an insight into Pogačar's build-up to the 2027 season. In a MyWhoosh statement, he talked further about what it was like to be back riding again.

“It’s just nice to be back on the bike. I’m taking it step by step at the moment and slowly building things back up towards next season. I’ve used MyWhoosh a lot over the years, especially for structured sessions indoors, so it’s good to be back riding on it now.”

The Slovenian crashed on stage eight of the Vuelta, while leading the race by nearly four minutes. An innocuous looking stone sent him sprawling into the pack, after he hit it while taking a drink. It's the first time in his career that he has had to retire from a Grand Tour – let alone crashed out of one.

Movistar rider Enric Mas inherited his lead and went on to win the race, which he has previously finished second in three times.

Žigart's crash at the Faun Tour saw her re-fracture her jaw – an injury originally sustained in a heavy crash at the Tour de Suisse in June. Her team announced on Monday that she would not race for the remainder of the year.

When Tadej Pogačar crashed out of the Vuelta a España, the news spread around the cycling world in seconds.

The Slovenian left the Spanish Grand Tour with injuries severe enough that means he will miss the rest of the 2026 season. Not only did that open the door for Enric Mas (Movistar) to win the Vuelta, but it also meant that Pogačar would be unable to defend his rainbow jersey in Montréal.

Before Pogačar crashed out, most riders were likely just aiming for the podium at the UCI Road World Championships. His absence changes everything.

Team USA has its best chance of winning in decades, with Brandon McNulty among the race favourites. Here’s why.

Pogačar has been unstoppable on hilly courses, winning everything from Milan-San Remo and Liège-Bastogne-Liège to Strade Bianche and Il Lombardia in the past few seasons. The race that most closely mimics the upcoming Worlds is the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal. While Pogačar has won that twice before, last year he finished second behind his teammate, McNulty.

In 2025, the American launched the race-winning move with 36km to go, joined by compatriot Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek), Louis Barré (then Intermarché-Wanty) and Pogačar. The latter split the group again with less than 20km to go. Eventually, McNulty attacked off Simmons’ wheel to bridge across to Pogačar (who, it should be said, may have been waiting for his teammate), and the pair rode arm-in-arm across the finish line.

It’s easy to say that McNulty’s victory was a gift, but the American was certainly the first or second-strongest rider that day, having shown the strength to drop everyone in the race bar Pogačar.

The Americans had quite the day in 2025, with Simmons finishing third and Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost) breaking away from the peloton to finish fourth. All three will be on the same team come September 27, joined by Matteo Jorgenson, Kevin Vermaerke, Larry Warbasse, Artem Schmidt and Sean Quinn.

Team USA is, without a doubt, one of the strongest teams in the race, especially after McNulty and Simmons just finished third and fourth, respectively, in the 2026 GP Montréal. But can team tactics make a difference on the Montréal road race course?

The World Championship road race uses the same city circuit as GP Montréal, with the defining feature of a 1.6-kilometre climb called the Voie Camillien-Houde. The climb snakes its way up through Mount Royal Park before descending into the city streets. There is a 500-metre difference between the Worlds loop and the GP Montréal circuit, but the essential climbs and descents are identical.

If there is only one thing to know about the Montréal city circuits, it’s that there is hardly a flat metre of road. Every twist, turn and pitch makes it difficult to organise a chase. That means breakaways are more likely to succeed.

In the post-pandemic era, the winning group at GP Montréal has never been larger than five riders. Pogačar won in 2022 and 2024, Adam Yates outsprinted Pavel Sivakov in 2023, McNulty won in 2025, and Isaac del Toro outsprinted Paul Seixas to win this year’s edition. It has always been a race of attrition, with the peloton growing thinner and thinner each lap around Montréal.

The rider who wins will need a combination of high fatigue resistance and VO2 max power. There are plenty of riders who can push 8w/kg for five minutes, but how many can do the same numbers after five hours of racing?

McNulty is one of those few, as he displayed in the last two editions of GP Montréal. Not only did he finish alongside Pogačar in 2025, but he arguably did more work, sitting in the wind, launching the winning move and then bridging solo to Pogačar in the finale.

While it’s easy to draw comparisons between GP Montréal and the World Championships, there are a few key differences. Let’s start with the route.

GP Montréal is 209 kilometres long, while the 2026 Road Worlds is 273 kilometres. Instead of the 17 repeats of the Voie Camillien-Houde that we see in GP Montréal, the Worlds course features only 12 laps of the city circuit, preceded by a 100-kilometre flatter section.

That means the early break at Worlds will form on the flats, whereas at GP Montréal it forms on the Voie Camillien-Houde, which is featured at kilometre zero. Break formation is crucial on a route like this because the breakaway riders have a legitimate chance of making it to the finish. Of course, chances favour the peloton, but chasing on a hilly city circuit is easier said than done.

When looking at the list of pre-race favourites, it might seem crazy to mention McNulty among them. The list includes Remco Evenepoel, Wout van Aert, Isaac del Toro, Paul Seixas, Mathieu van der Poel and more. McNulty’s résumé isn’t as impressive as those of the biggest names, but you have to remember that he has spent the majority of his career riding in service of Pogačar. The American has been instrumental in many of Pogačar’s Tour triumphs and has had little opportunity to ride for himself since joining UAE Team Emirates in 2020.

Perhaps the biggest factor playing in McNulty’s favour is the timing of his peak. Late September is notorious for mental and physical burnout, lost motivation and a longing for the off-season. While Van Aert was flying at the Vuelta, it’s difficult to say if he’ll be able to maintain that form for two more weeks. Evenepoel, Del Toro and Seixas have enjoyed a long break after the Tour, but we’ve already seen how difficult it is to peak for a specific one-day race. While Del Toro won this year’s GP Montréal, he was dropped from the lead group only two days before at GP Québec.

In 2025, McNulty was in the form of his life in August and September. He won the Tour de Pologne, GP Montréal, Tour de Luxembourg and CRO Race, with those final two races finishing on September 21 and October 5. The Worlds road race is on September 27 this year, and McNulty has already shown he is in top shape with his podium finish at GP Montréal.

Instead of fighting each other for the podium, Simmons and McNulty will team up at the World Championships. With the help of Jorgenson, Vermaerke and more, the American team has a legitimate chance of winning the rainbow jersey.

Remco Evenepoel has predicted that this year's elite men's World Championships around Montreal will be one for those riders with a climber's build, rather than power riders like Mathieu van der Poel.

The Belgian was speaking after the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal at the weekend, won by Isaac Del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG). Evenepoel pointed out the average build of the top-10 finishers – who included Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM, second), Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe's Evenepoel in fifth and Tom Pidcock (Pinarello Q36.5) in sixth, was very much that of a climber.

“With the way the longer climb is ridden, it is really difficult for the heavier guys,” he was reported as saying on the Dutch outlet Wielerflits.

“If you look at the average weight of the [Montreal] top 10, we are perhaps at 63 or 65 kilograms,” said Evenepoel. “Those aren't heavy men, but riders like Wout [van Aert] and Mathieu [van der Poel] can survive this on super days,” he added.

Van Aert and Van der Poel clock in at 75 and 78kg respectively – some way above 72kg Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek), the heaviest finisher in the top-10 at the GP Montreal, in a creditable fourth place.

The World Championships course and the GP Montreal use the same Mount Royal loop in the centre of the Quebeçois city, featuring a significant climb – the Voie Camillien Houde – and multiple smaller rises, each lap. However, the races are not the same. While the GP Montreal is held exclusively on the Mount Royal loop, which it completes 16 times, the Worlds course features 100 mostly flat kilometres, before diving into the Park for 12 laps of the loop. The Worlds places less onus on outright climbing ability.

“It is also a difference that we will first ride 100 kilometres on flat terrain,” Evenepoel said. “We can ease into it a bit then; here it was full throttle right from the start. And the race is much longer, so it will be less explosive towards the end and come down more to endurance.

“It was a good dress rehearsal," he told Wielerflits. "Most of the men designated as favourites were all at the front. I always feel a bit, when coming down from altitude, that I lack that extra punch. But we still have two weeks, so it will be fine.”

Urška Žigart will not race for the remainder of the season, after being hit with a second dose of bad luck this season, this time at the Faun Tour Femmes last weekend. The 29-year-old crashed on stage three to Tournon-sur-Rhône, southern France, and fractured her jaw.

The AG Insurance-Soudal rider had planned to race the upcoming World Championships in Montréal, where she would have been a key player on the Slovenian squad.

It was a repeat break of the injury she sustained back in June during the Tour de Suisse. On that occasion Žigart crashed at high speed in the final kilometres of the second stage. She escaped surgery but did not race again for six weeks, and the Tour de France Femmes the next time she pinned on a number.

"Given the nature of the injury and the fact that it concerns a repeated fracture, Urška’s 2026 season is likely to come to an early end," said the team in a statement. "This would also mean she will miss the upcoming World Championships. Her focus will now fully shift towards her recovery. The team will closely monitor the healing process before making a definitive decision on the remainder of her season.

"We wish Urška a smooth recovery and look forward to seeing her back with the team," the statement concluded.

The Faun Tour Femmes, held in the south of France, was her first race since the Tour de France Femmes, and she was sitting third overall after two of the four stages. Žigart excels as a climber and a GC contender, and this year finished sixth in the Vuelta Femenina in May, and eighth in the Giro d'Italia Women the following month.

The chances are it may be a rather sombre atmosphere in the Žigart household next week. Her partner, five-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar, crashed heavily in the Vuelta a España and was forced to retire – the first time he has done so from a Grand Tour.

The UCI Road World Championships, an event where both could have done well, begins on 20 September, but the pair will be forced to spectate, or watch it on television.

Oscar Onley battled and survived a "rollercoaster" Vuelta a España to not only finish his maiden Grand Tour for Netcompany-Ineos, but win the white jersey as best young rider.

The Scottish rider finished sixth overall, having got through illness mid-race and bouncing back from crashes, having only just recovered from the injury which took him out of the Tour de France.

Onley narrowly missed out on victory on stage nine, won by eventual overall victor Enric Mas (Movistar), and was looking good for a top five, before he lost time on the penultimate day. However, he still ended up on the podium.

"My first Grand Tour with the team, and it's been a bit of a rollercoaster throughout the race," the 23-year-old said in a clip posted by his team post-race. "I'm sure every Grand Tour is like that, but I've had quite a few setbacks. The way myself and the team have planned around these and bounced back has been something really special. The rider group we've had here has been really incredible.

"The way we clicked on the bike, which is not easy to do, especially as there were a few riders I hadn't actually ridden with before this race. Also the way we've been off the bike, like around dinner, it's something that you can't manufacture. It's something that has to happen naturally. For that to happen so quickly has been nice and makes a big difference over the three weeks."

"Getting second on stage nine on Aitana was obviously good for the confidence, knowing I was capable of that level, but to be that close to the stage win as well was something that kinda grinded on me a little bit," he continued. "Especially as I didn't get that close again. It's something I've reflected on quite a bit. Overall, I was still happy with that performance."

The Vuelta started with Josh Tarling on the team, a week on from the death of his brother, Finlay Tarling.

"We started in a really good way with Josh," Onley said. "Everyone knows what Josh has been through the past few weeks, so for him to turn up was full respect to him, and I have a lot of admiration for him. He made the decision to pull out in the first week, which we all completely understood and [we] were there for him. He did some incredible things for me in the first week, and it meant a lot to me. To carry the white jersey on is something that I'm proud of as well."

The next Grand Tour target for Onley will likely be next year's Tour de France, which begins in his home country; the last time he rode the French Grand Tour, he finished fourth in 2025.

"I think it's really exciting that it [the Tour] is starting in Edinburgh next year and it's on home roads," he said. "It goes maybe 10km from my house so I'm really looking forward to it. There are no guarantees in cycling, we learned this year that you can set out plans at the beginning of the year and you can end up in Granada in September. Who knows what's going to happen, but I'm looking forward to whatever the circumstances."

Tom Pidcock crossed the finish line of the GP de Montréal and puffed out his cheeks as he rolled to a stop next to the crowd’s clanging cowbells.

The WorldTour race provided a “super hard” dress rehearsal for the Pinarello Q36.5 leader. Using the same circuit as the World Championships road race, last Sunday’s 214km event allowed him to see the lap for the first time and gave an indication of the favourites.

Pidcock is one of them after carrying on his late summer momentum. He finished fourth in last Friday’s GP de Québec, won by Remco Evenepoel, and sixth in Montréal. “I was up there, I was racing. It was definitely worth coming [to Canada],” he told Cycling Weekly post-race.

Given his form, the saw-blade puncheur’s profile and the absence of Tadej Pogačar, next Sunday’s race could be Pidcock’s best opportunity yet of an elite road race rainbow jersey.

“Probably, but I don’t think it’s the biggest chance in the world,” he said. “We’ll see: you don’t need to be the strongest to win the Worlds. Well, in the past [you did], maybe now it’s different.”

No “Pogi” means a more open race. “Tadej is the hardest rider to beat and he’s not here. Then the next best rider is less hard to beat,” Pidcock said earlier in the week.

The 26-year-old was a protagonist in Montréal, making a couple of attacks, but he could not follow a decisive acceleration by Paul Seixas and Isaac del Toro. The UAE Team Emirates XRG star won, out-sprinting the French prodigy.

“I attacked quite early a few times, probably earlier than other guys,” Pidcock said. ‘You really need legs the last two laps on this course. But it didn’t make much difference: Seixas and Del Toro showed they were the strongest. I think they’re the favourites for the Worlds.”

“It is going to be incredibly attritional,” he added. “It could be a bit of a group behind, especially if the race is longer [273 kilometres in distance] – people won’t be able to make the difference with being explosive.”

Cohesion and strength-in-depth will be important assets. Although Great Britain’s line-up was yet to be announced on Sunday, Pidcock told CW that Oscar Onley (Netcompany-Ineos) and Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) would be competing with him.

“It’s a good course for me, I’ve done well in the WorldTour race before,” 2023 GP de Montréal winner Yates told CW ahead of finishing 13th in this year’s edition. “I put my hand up [for it], we’ll have a good team and give it a crack.”

Asked whether he would be sole leader or co-leader, the veteran said: “We’re never going to be there as number one favourite so the more bodies you have in front in the final, the better your chance.”

Enric Mas has won his first grand tour at the 16th attempt with victory in the Vuelta a España.

The Spaniard may have inherited the red jersey when Tadej Pogačar crashed out on stage eight, but he showed himself worthy of it across the following fortnight and rightfully ascended to the top step of the podium in Granada.

When the Slovenian broke his collar bone on an innocuous piece of straight road en route to Xeraco, Mas was already 3.50 in arrears. But over the course of the next two weeks he put over a minute into Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) to show there was also a gap in quality behind him.

Throughout those weeks the Spaniard has been keen to point out that he is in the form of his life.

This has been a long time coming for Mas. He rode his first grand at the Vuelta in 2017 for Quick-Step. He won a stage the following year with a gutsy attack on the race’s penultimate stage. It was a ride that also vaulted him into second place overall, just behind GC winner Simon Yates.

That performance at 23 made him one of a still growing list of riders to be saddled with expectations of filling the hole left in Spanish cycling by Alberto Contador’s retirement the year before.

It was an expectation Mas never quite able to fulfil. Over the next decade he became consistent top ten performer at the Tour de France and made it back onto the Vuelta podium in 2021, 2022 and 2024 but always seemed to be missing the extra power to challenge the dominant riders of his generation. He could keep pace with them most of the time – he even beat Pogačar at the one-day Giro dell'Emilia in 2022 - but couldn’t quite challenge them on the toughest days in stage races. It’s notable that the Mallorca native hadn’t pulled on a grand tour leader’s jersey until this race.

To their credit Movistar, who’ve backed him for the majority of his career, have been happy to go into many races with him as their leader and today’s victory will surely be a sweet reward for that patience.

This win is Mas finally delivering on the promise he showed early in his career. But that promise was never that he’d be in Contador’s class, dominating GC classifications across multiple years. He said as much. Speaking to Dan Benson at Cycling News in 2018 Mas said saw the compliment in the comparison but said: “I want to be the first Enric Mas, not the next Alberto Contador."

The promise of young Mas was of a strong GC contender, much of the rest was out of his hands – who you’re riding against does matter, as Raymond Poulidor would atest. On that promise he delivered. And these last two weeks he’s shown a strength and maturity that all that experience gives.

Contador himself pointed it out earlier this week telling Spanish outlet AS: “This time a Grand Tour lead became 'vacant', and Enric seized that opportunity.

"That's not a gift; it's thanks to his hard work and his form. He was the strongest."

During his time in red Mas has cut a figure who knows these opportunities and these legs are rare. And that it’s rarer still they coincide. Asked after the race’s queen stage what his impending victory meant for his future he said: “Let me enjoy the Vuelta, please.”

At 31 it’s hard to imagine this win will vault Mas far up the GC pecking order. Further grand tour wins are far from guaranteed. But should he finish with just this one, knowing the number of hard years, and near misses it took to get here, Mas himself might well be satisfied with that.

Tobias Johannessen won a dramatic and attacking final stage of the Vuelta a España in Granada as Enric mas was crowned Vuelta Champion.

The Norwegian was among a group that went clear on the final climb of the race and he marked attacks within the final few kilometres of the race to be in a position to contest the sprint.

In the end it was a two-up affair and the Uno-X Mobility rider bested Alessandro Romele (XDS Astana).

Johannessen, who was narrowly beaten into second atop Collado del Alguacil yesterday, was overjoyed at the finish. He told TNT: “In the last lap I heard I was in the front group and I tried to not pull in case [Magnus] Cort came back but I saw we had a gap and I was so focused on trying to get that win because it was over three years since the last time.”

“We had talked about how we wanted to do it with Cort, which was to deliver him into the last corner in first and I remembered that from the meeting. I told myself that I’m not going to do anything before trying to be first in the last corner and just go full gas from there.

“I just can’t believe that I can do it today, it feels so good.”

The Norwegian’s win capped a very successful first appearance for Uno-X Mobility at the Vuelta. The team has won two stages through Johannessen today and Andreas Leknessund on stage seven and been an animating force throughout the race.

Johannessen said: “I feel that we’ve been such a strong team. We had some ups and downs but we’ve solved every day as best as we could.

“The win up Aramón Valdelinares was really special and of course yesterday was a really special day for the team and we really got some confidence from that.”

Johannessen’s win came after a chaotic couple of laps of the race’s finishing circuit, which was a stark contrast to the day’s opening kilometres.

Before the stage even started Mas’s GC victory was given a boost by the decision to neutralise the GC at the start of the final lap of the day’s finishing circuit.

Dry weather had resulted in the tight city streets being slippery and the riders’ union the CPA agreed with the organisers that the GC times would be taken 10km from the finish.

Given the celebrations, the general ceremonial nature of the day and perhaps also the stage neutralisation, well over half the stage had passed, mostly with Movistar in special red kit on the front, before there was anything approaching racing.

There was 30km to go as the peloton crossed the finish-line for the second time, the fifth being the end of the stage, and the race opened up as Groupama FDJ United came to the front to set the pace. They had appeared to be working for their sprinter Bastien Tronchon and as the race went up the steep city centre climb he instigated a split with eight riders joining him off the front of the peloton.

Alongside Tronchon was the winner of five stages at this year’s Vuelta, Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) as they built a gap of 11 seconds. Understandably, the Brit was the rider everyone in the group was keen to get rid of.

However, that became a moot point when the break was caught the penultimate time up the climb. By now the GC contenders had all intentionally dropped themselves and they would play no part in the finale.

Despite several efforts no one could break clear and they entered the final climb all together. Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious), who is set to retire at the end of the season, was the first to mount an attack and got himself a gap. Soon it began to yawn out but Laurens de Plus (Netcompany Ineos) bridged across and went over the top of Bilbao to go it alone.

But as the raced descended back towards the finish a select group of 11 riders, including Brennan and Bilbao, formed at the head of the race.

At the bottom of the decent there was only 4km to go and one rider after another attacked. With 2km to it was a group of four riders that went free made of Axel Laurance (Netcompany Ineos), Ramses Debruyne (Alpecin-Premier Tech), Johannessen and Romele. Behind everyone looked at Brennan to close the gap but he couldn’t.

Laurance and Debruyne were dropped in the final few hundred metres leaving the other two to fight it out for the win. Johannessen led out the sprint and despite Romele’s best effort he couldn’t quite come around the Norwegian.

Results

Vuelta a España 2026, stage 21: Carrefour Granada > Granada (112km)

1. Tobias Johannessen (Nor) Uno-X Mobility in 2:54:08
2. Alessandro Romele (Ita) XDS Astan
3. Ramses Debruyne (Bel) Alpecin-Premier Tech
4. Matthew Brennan (GBr) Visma-Lease a Bike
5. Bastien Tronchon (Fra) Groupama-FDJ United
6. Pello Bilbao (Esp) Bahrain Victorious
7. Finn Fisher-Black (NZl) Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe
8. Axel Laurance (Fra) Netcompany Ineos
9. Pau Martí (Esp) NSN Cycling Team
10. Marco Brenner (Ger) Tudor Pro Cycling, all at same time

General classification after stage 21

1. Enric Mas (Esp) Movistar Team, in 73:52:55
2. Primož Roglič (Slo) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, +2:15
3. Felix Gall (Aut) Decathlon CMA CGM, +2:44
4. Richard Carapaz (Ecu) EF Education-EasyPost, +6:54
5. Sepp Kuss (USA) Visma-Lease a Bike, +8:45
6. Oscar Onley (GBr) Netcompany Ineos, +9:28
7. Jakob Omrzel (Slo) Bahrain Victorious, +10:38
8. Clément Berthet (Fra) Groupama-FDJ United, +11:41
9. Cristián Rodríguez (Spa) XDS Astana, +11:59
10. Harold Tejada (Col) XDS Astana, +12:51

Sepp Kuss’ 2026 Vuelta a España hadn’t gone to plan ahead of 20th and penultimate stage, but the American seized an opportunity presented on a crazy day of racing in Andalucia to vault into the top-five on General Classification.

The Visma-Lease a Bike rider was sitting in 11th place ahead of the stage, more than eleven minutes down on race leader Enric Mas, but just five minutes away from Netcompany-Ineos’ Oscar Onley in fifth place.

More than 50 riders attacked away from the Movistar-led peloton in the early stages of the day, including the entire Visma-Lease a Bike team, minus Kuss.

As Onley and others ahead of him in the standings began to suffer on the first of four major climbs which would characterise the day, Kuss’ chance to move up presented itself.

He attempted a move on the first ascent of the Puerto de el Purche but was brought back. A second move the second time up the climb was more effective.

Kuss quickly built a lead over a stalling red jersey group, picking up team-mates as he went who would be able to pace him all the way. Ahead of the final climb, the Collado del Alguacil, it was Wout van Aert driving things for Kuss. On the climb itself, young Norwegian prospect Jørgen Nordhagen pulled Kuss all the way to the line, finishing eighth on the stage behind veteran Mikel Landa (Soudal-QuickStep).

The plan had worked. Kuss moved ahead of Onley and others and sits in fifth place ahead of the final stage in Granada, 8:45 behind Mas (Movistar).

“Hats off to the team. We had a plan, and it was just like the stars aligning in every moment of the race,” Kuss told reporters after the stage.

“Every single guy on the team had a part in it. That's how we race as a team. That's our identity. It was just amazing being part of it.”

“I had goosebumps the whole day, and it’s just fun to go out and race. Most of this race I've kind of had a bittersweet feeling, I’ve just not been able to race like I wanted…but today I really enjoyed. It was like a playground out there with all these steep climbs.”

2023 Vuelta a España winner Kuss revealed that the team had been discussing for several days how they could enable him to move up the rankings.

The unpredictable nature of the stage no doubt played into Visma-Lease a Bike’s hands, but the team executed their strategy to perfection.

“From the days before, we knew that I wouldn't be able to just jump in the early break. The plan was to go for the stage win, but you can never control the distance the break has. Already before the first time on Purche, there was a really big gap.”

“I had nothing to lose. I knew I had a bunch of strong teammates ahead, so I just went all-in on the first climb, and yeah, the guys were amazing. It never felt like I was alone.”

Mikel Landa rolled back the clock on stage 20 of the Vuelta a España to claim his first Grand Tour stage win in nine years, as Enric Mas all-but sealed the red jersey.

The Soudal-QuickStep rider infiltrated a large breakaway on the penultimate day of the Spanish three-week race, moving away alongside Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) and Ramses Debruyne (Alpecin-Premier Tech).

The 36-year-old attacked at the foot of the Collado del Alguacil and broke his rivals, riding solo to the win on a famous day for Spanish cycling.

In the General Classification race behind, it was Felix Gall (Decathlon-CMA CGM) who finished ahead of the rest, but Movistar's Mas comfortably defended his lead ahead of the final stage in Granada on Sunday.

The 186.8 kilometre stage was an attacking and chaotic affair, with around 50 riders attacking away from the bunch in the early stages, including several team-mates of riders high up in the General Classification. Several attacks from the General Classification were thwarted throughout the day, as Mas looked assured in the maillot rojo.

There were overall classification movements behind Mas, as Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike) vaulted up the standings with a long-range attack and Oscar Onley (Netcompany-Ineos) was dropped on the first major climb. Kuss jumped from 11th to 5th, ahead of Onley in the General Classification.

The podium remained the same as it was at the start of the day, with Mas finishing ahead of Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Gall, despite the Gall eating into Roglič's advantage over him.

Landa's was a fairytale comeback win following several injury setbacks over the last few years. The former Giro d'Italia and Vuelta stage-winner suffered a fractured pelvis in a crash at Itzulia Basque Country earlier this season.

"I feel very happy. Something that I've been looking for a long time and finally I win again," Landa said afterwards.

"[It's] really emotional. It's been a really hard season, a really hard Vuelta for me and today was the last chance."

How it Happened

A 186km stage in Andalucia provided the final mountainous battleground to decide the 2026 Vuelta a España, with five climbs culminating with the brutal, beyond category Collado del Alguacil.

The early skirmishes were chaotic, with almost one third of the field which started the stage in La Calahorra forming various breakaway groups in front of the Movistar-led peloton. A leading breakaway of 11 enjoyed a maximum lead of just over 11 minutes as the final sequence of four climbs began.

It was Richard Carapaz (EF Education First-EasyPost) who began the attacking from the GC group, moving with 96km to go on the first ascent of the Puerto de el Purche, which would be tackled twice. He linked up with Kuss, stretching his lead out to 30 seconds, but more pertinently, dislodged Mas from his team-mates in the group, forcing Decathlon-CMA CGM to move to the front. The group was ripped into piece, and by the top of the Puerto de el Purche, just the general classification riders were left - although most had helpers up the road.

As the second ascent of the Puerto de el Purche began to bite, Carapaz had been swallowed up by the group. He had one team-mate for company, however, and drove the pace in a group that only contained Mas, Roglič, Gall and Kuss. Sitting 11th at the start of the day, Kuss found the perfect time to separate himself from the group.

On the penultimate ascent, the Puerto de el Duque, team-mates of each leader had drifted back from the breakaway as Kuss extended his advantage over the red jersey to almost three minutes. Callum Thornley, one of the break-out riders of this Vuelta, drove the pace on for Roglič at the bottom. However, the Slovenian didn’t appear to have the legs to attack.

Once again it was Carapaz who moved multiple times, but over the top of the Puerto de el Duque it was a stalemate between the top-four on GC. Up ahead, Landa, Debruyne and Johannessen had stretched clear of the rest of the breakaway and looked poised to challenge for the stage. Kuss, meanwhile, had taken more than five minutes over the red jersey with the support of Wout van Aert and was about to threaten Carapaz’s fourth place.

It would all come down to the steep slopes of the Collado del Alguacil, with its double-digit percentages. Up front, Landa attacked early and distanced both rivals on his way to victory.

In the GC group, more stasis, with domestiques setting the pace in the first half of the climb as their leaders looked unable, or unwilling, to attack.

It was Gall who made the first move in the final three kilometres, initially taking Mas with him before distancing the race leader.

Mas eventually crossed the line a few seconds down on Gall to keep his red jersey heading into the final stage in Granada on Sunday.

Results

Vuelta a España 2026, stage 20: La Calahorra > Collado del Alguacil (186.8km)

1. Mikel Landa (Esp) Soudal-QuickStep in 04:58:01
2. Tobias Halland Johannessen (Nor) Uno-X Mobility, +47s
3. Ramses Debruyne (Bel) Alpecin-Premier Tech, + 1:27
4. Pau Miquel (Esp) Bahrain Victorious, +3:00
5. Urko Berrade (Esp) Equipo Kern Pharma, +4:12
6. Jan Hirt (Cze) NSN Cycling, +4:18
7. Jørgen Nordhgagen (Nor) Visma-Lease a Bike, +4:35
8. Sepp Kuss (USA) Visma-Lease a Bike, same time
9. Walter Calzoni (Ita) Pinarello-Q36.5, +4:48
10. Lorenzo Fortunato (Ita) XDS-Astana, +4:53

General Classification after stage 20

1. Enric Mas (Esp) Movistar Team, in 70:56:58
2. Primož Roglič (Slo) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, +2:15
3. Felix Gall (Aut) Decathlon CMA CGM, +2:44
4. Richard Carapaz (Ecu) EF Education-EasyPost, +6:54
5. Sepp Kuss (USA) Visma-Lease a Bike, +8:45
6. Oscar Onley (GBr) Netcompany Ineos, +9:28
7. Jakob Omrzel (Slo) Bahrain Victorious, +10:38
8. Clément Berthet (Fra) Groupama-FDJ United, +11:41
9. Cristián Rodríguez (Spa) XDS Astana, +11:59
10. Harold Tejada (Col) XDS Astana, +14:40

Remco Evenepoel has emerged as the clear favourite to reclaim the world road race title he won four years ago after an electrifying performance at the GP Québec.

The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe man escaped the group of favourites in the closing laps alongside Lidl-Trek’s Giulio Ciccone and Uno-X Mobility’s Anton Charmig, before dispatching his companions on the final climb to the line.

Evenepoel rode with boldness on a route that is usually suited to the puncheurs of the peloton, although a new final for 2026 helped to swing the pendulum back towards the climbers. He will now attempt to claim victory at the GP Montréal on Sunday, before aiming to win the world championships time-trial for the fourth time in succession and take his second road title the week after.

"I need to stay calm and take it day by day because Sunday is another day,” he said after the race. “Then it's next Sunday, and the Sunday after. It's a big two weeks ahead for me."

The 26-year-old last won the road race rainbow jersey in 2022 in Wollongong, Australia. With Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) concluding his season early following a crash at the Vuelta a España, Evenepoel's stock has risen considerably.

"This weekend was the goal to do as good as possible twice, and it's a pretty good start, I must say," he added during his winner’s press conference.

"I think I still have a bit of work to do. This weekend, I really wanted to use it to find the best sensations. It’s clear I wasn’t on a bad day, otherwise you don’t win here, but personally, I didn’t feel like it was really my best day on the bike. So I think it’s clear there’s still a bit of room for improvement," he said.

"There are still two weeks before the road race, so I’m really going to use this weekend to take a step forward, then follow it up with the time trial, and then another week to do specific training. But clearly it was good, because otherwise you don’t win."

While Evenepoel is clearly in the ascendancy, several of his would-be rivals for the road race struggled in Québec.

Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek) will be tending to his wounds after crashing in the final sprint from the chasing group. He appeared to overlap wheels with Paul Seixas (Decathlon-CMA CGM); the young Frenchman unable to make an impact on the race, although the course in Montréal will suit him better.

Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was another who found the going tough, languishing at the back of the group during the final circuits. The Mexican has spent time training at altitude in Colorado ahead of the Worlds, but faltered in his first Canadian race, finishing more than five minutes down on Evenepoel.

Briton Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5), fresh from his XCO World Championship victory in Val di Sile, looked in better form. Pidcock finished in fourth place having attacked the Ayuso-Seixas group on the final rise to the line.

Although victory at GP Québec will be a confidence boost for the Olympic champion, his dominance over the next two weeks is far from assured. All the top favourites have been away on various training camps which can deaden the legs on return to racing. It could be that the likes of Del Toro, Seixas and others feel the benefit of the work they have put in in a fortnight’s time.

The 2026 UCI road world championships begin in Montréal on the 20th of September with the elite time-trials. The road races for women and men will take place on the 26th and 27th of September respectively.

Eddie Dunbar climbed to victory atop Peña Blancas on stage 19 of the Vuelta a España on Friday, timing his final surge to the line perfectly to win.

The Pinarello Q36.5 rider chased down Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) inside the final kilometre to take his third Vuelta stage win, and his first victory in four years. In doing so, Dunbar won Pinarello Q36.5's first Grand Tour stage, and just their second WorldTour race. To cap things off for the team, third place went to Tom Gloag, also of Pinarello Q36.5; it is Gloag's best result at a WorldTour race.

Behind, Enric Mas (Movistar) finished with the group of favourites, meaning he retains the red jersey by a healthy margin going into the penultimate day, Saturday's stage 20. Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Mas's closest challenger, attempted to shake things up, but he could not distance the Spaniard, who is now just two days away from glory.

Dunbar was part of a group of 20 which was fully established with around 111km to go, before it was gradually whittled down to a final group of four on the final climb: himself, Buitrago, Gloag and Urko Berrade (Kern Phama). Buitrago attacked with about 1.8km to go, and was reeled in by Dunbar inside the final 700m.

"It’s incredible," Dunbar said on TV post-stage. "I really didn’t expect this today, I even said in the team radio after about 50 or 60km that today wasn’t my day, I wasn’t feeling good. I ended up in the break, and my legs came round a bit. I had two teammates in the break as well, which helped, that made me feel a lot more comfortable in the breakaway. It gave me a bit of time to relax if anything happened on the flat or on the descents, I had someone there.

"They did a super job, and having Tom there in the final made a big difference. This year I had three months out where I didn’t ride a bike at all after a bad accident, and I really didn’t think I’d be here, even competing for stages. I can’t believe it, I can’t."

"When you’re in a situation like that, I wish I had the same legs as Buitrago for sure, because the attacks he put in were incredibly strong," he added. "I need to be a bit more careful about when I used my effort. I knew I had one effort in me and I wanted to use that to win the stage. When they went on the steep bit with about 12km to go I paced myself there not to go into the red, and I came back.

"Having Tom there gave us a bit of extra insurance, and I thought Tom was gonna get the win today, he looked super strong. In the end, having the numbers there really played in our favour. That last kilometre went so quick, I don’t really remember what happened."

The race's longest stage was the antepenultimate chance for a stage win, but also for the GC to be shaken up, all of which would be decided on the final climb of Peñas Blancas, 18.8km at 6.5%, but with ramps far above that.

As well as those who challenged for the day's win, the break included Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X Mobility), Kevin Vermaerke (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Guillaume Martin (Groupama-FDJ), as well as a third Pinarello Q36.5 rider in Marcel Camprubí.

Buitrago went with 13km to go, but was then joined by Dunbar, Gloag and Urko Berrade (Kern Pharma), with the quartet boasting an advantage of 44 seconds with 7km to go. The Colombian attacked again with 1.8km to go, with a gap quickly opening up, however, Dunbar responded, bringing the gap back to around 10 seconds under the flamme rouge. Double digit gradients inside the final kilometre led to the gap being squashed, and Dunbar riding to glory.

Meanwhile, further down the climb, Movistar, EF Education-EasyPost and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe had shared turns controlling what was left of the peloton, but ultimately, it came down to the leaders, who could not shake each other. Roglič and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) both attempted to put time into others, but with no luck, and the pair, along with Mas, Oscar Onley (Netcompany-Ineos) and Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) all finished together.

Saturday's stage 20 will be decisive, then, in deciding the direction of the race, although Mas still has 1:37 on Roglič. There are five categorised climbs, including three first category efforts, one hors-categorie, and one cat three.

Results

Vuelta a España 2026, stage 19: Vélez-Málaga > Peñas Blancas (210.8km

1. Eddie Dunbar (Irl) Pinarello Q36.5, in 5:00:54
2. Santiago Buitrago (Col) Bahrain Victorious, +14s
3. Tom Gloag (GBr) Pinarello Q36.5, +23s
4. Urko Berrade (Esp) Kern Pharma, +44s
5. Marcel Camprubí (Esp) Pinarello Q36.5, +1:44
6. Andreas Leknessund (Nor) Uno-X Mobility, +2:01
7. Guillaume Martin (Fra) Groupama-FDJ, +2:11
8. Chris Hamilton (Aus) Picnic PostNL, +2:39
9. Kevin Vermaerke (USA) UAE Team Emirates-XRG, +3:03
10. Sergio Samitier (Esp) Cofidis, +3:17

General classification after stage 19

1. Enric Mas (Esp) Movistar Team, in 62:52:03
2. Primož Roglič (Slo) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, +1:37
3. Felix Gall (Aut) Decathlon CMA CGM, +3:01
4. Richard Carapaz (Ecu) EF Education-EasyPost, +5:17
5. Oscar Onley (GBr) Netcompany Ineos, +6:03
6. Jakob Omrzel (Slo) Bahrain Victorious, +7:06
7. Clément Berthet (Fra) Groupama-FDJ United, +7:57
8. Cristián Rodríguez (Spa) XDS Astana, +8:21
9. Mattias Skjelmose (Den) Lidl-Trek,, +9:06
10. Harold Tejada (Col) XDS Astana, +10:27

GPs Québec and Montréal 2026 are a pair of one-day sister races, with the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec taking place on Friday 11 September and the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal following on Sunday 13 September.

As well as being the UCI World Tour's only two stops in North America, this year's GPs Québec and Montréal will serve as an amuse-bouche for the UCI Road World Championships taking place in La Métropole later this month.

As a result, the "Canadian classics" have attracted a stellar field, headlined by Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates XRG) and Tom Pidcock (Pinarello–Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team).

Evenepoel and Del Toro each made the Tour de France podium in July, while Pidcock finished in the top 10. The 19-year-old sensation Paul Seixas fell just outside the medal positions, and could well be a dark horse for silverware in Canada.

Matteo Jorgenson (Visma–Lease a Bike), Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates XRG) and Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates XRG) are among the other big names to have also declared, though it'll be worth keeping an eye out for Michael Matthews (Team Jayco–AlUla), who's won the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec a record three times and the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal once.

The Québec route is particularly suited to puncheurs, incorporating 2,780m of elevation gain across 20 laps of the 10.3km circuit, while the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal's 13.4km Mount Royal circuit will up the climbing with 4,304m of elevation gain across 16 laps. The route will be very similar to the one employed at the UCI Road World Championships in the city later in September.

Below, Cycling Weekly has put together all the key information on broadcasters and live streams so you can watch GPs Québec and Montréal wherever you are.

Quick guide to watching GPs Québec and Montréal

• UK: TNT Sports / HBO Max (£30.99/mon)
• US: HBO Max ($18.49/mon)
• Canada: CBC Gem (Free)
• Australia: Flobikes (AU$39.99/mon)
• Free live streams: CBC Gem (Canada), L'Equipe (France)
• Anywhere: Watch your local stream from anywhere with NordVPN

Can I watch GPs Québec and Montréal 2026 for free?

Yes, free GP Quebec and Montreal coverage is available in Canada and France.

The races are being shown on CBC Gem in Canada and on L'Equipe in France.

Coverage is geo-restricted, so if either of these channels would be your usual port of call but you're not in Canada or France right now, you'll need a VPN – more on that below.

How to watch GP Quebec and Montreal while abroad

Most streaming platforms have geo-restrictions these days, which means they only work in certain countries. But being locked out of the races is a thing of the past thanks to a VPN.

A Virtual Private Network is a piece of internet security software that can alter your device's location, so you can unblock your usual streaming services, even when you're abroad.

Want to know more? We have an explainer on the benefits, costs, and considerations of using a VPN...
– Should I use a VPN to watch cycling?

How to watch GPs Québec and Montréal 2026 in the UK

In the UK, the races are being shown live across TNT Sports, Warner Bros. Discovery's premium sports channels, with the Quebec GP (Friday) on TNT Sports 2 and the Montreal GP (Sunday) on TNT Sports 3. Check the schedule here.

The coverage will also be available to live stream online and on mobile devices via HBO Max, with a package price of £30.99 per month.

How to watch GPs Québec and Montréal 2026 in the US and Canada

For North American viewers, this year's coverage of GP Quebec and Montreal is divided across HBO Max for those in the US and free-to-air CBC Gem for those in Canada.

HBO Max starts at $18.49 per month for a plan that includes live sports, though you'll get more for your money if you sign up for a longer period, or bundle your subscription with Disney+ and Hulu.

To watch CBC Gem online, all you need to do is create an account.

How to watch GPs Québec and Montréal 2026 in Australia

In Australia, Flobikes is showing GP Québec and Montréal 2026. A subscription costs AU$39.99 per month or AU$155.88 per year.

▶︎ Read More: How to watch cycling for free in 2026

2026 GPs Québec and Montréal start and finish times

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

Ride Revolution are not the first British club team to declare that they want to go pro. In the past couple of years, there have been whispers of others wanting to move to UCI Continental level, not least Raptor Factory Racing, who declared this time last year that they were aiming to move up. That didn’t come to pass.

Since Trinity Racing and Saint Piran disappeared in 2024, there has been no domestic men’s conti team, if you don’t count Netcompany-Ineos Racing Academy, who are a WorldTour development squad.

However, hoping to change that in the next two years are Ride Revolution. The Milton Keynes-based club have been ever-present in domestic racing in the past couple of years, along with some forays abroad, and want to move up a level.

Their aim is to become a Continental team by 2028, not jumping up immediately. Their mid-August Instagram post explained: “For the last few seasons, we’ve been building Ride Revolution, one small step at a time. From domestic racing, to National Series success, to our first UCI races and international campaigns, every season has taken us a little further. Now, we’re ready to take a much bigger step.

“Our goal is to build Ride Revolution towards a professional level and establish a genuine UK development pathway supported by the people, partners, equipment and infrastructure required to compete at that level.”

Founded and run by Jake Hales, alongside team manager Zak Dawson, the pair are keen for the growth to be sustainable, as the latter explained to Cycling Weekly last week: “We’ve said 18 months because we know there are challenges. Jake has ridden on a Continental team before, and knows the level it needs to be, and we want to professionalise and give the riders the opportunity.”

“We’re not trying to do this to make money, if we could see our team as a Continental squad racing around the world, how cool would that be?” he continued. “We’re not just a race team with someone owning us, and we want to say to the top riders in the UK we can offer you a full programme, come on board. There’s a story line of trying to create a development team and create opportunities, but also have a bit of fun.”

There’s also the coaching side, which is how Ride Revolution began in the first place, in 2019. Dawson said: “It’s a sustainable method of bringing them in, coaching them, and also offering a race programme. We could have come out with the news and said we need this amount of money, but it’s about what can be sustainable to continue our growth.”

“I’m organising the races and the riders, while Jake’s overseeing the whole programme, the coaching, and the selection,” he continued. “Between the two of us, it’s become a passion project. Since the start of last year, we also had a coaching client come onboard, offering his support to the team, which was a really good help.

There are currently eight British Cycling-backed Elite Development Teams. Ride Revolution were not among those in 2026, but they want to go bigger.

“We want to try and create a platform for British cycling because it has been lacking, and a lot of riders on the UK scene need a way through,” Dawson says.

2027 will be a year for progress, and attempting to prove to sponsors that they should back the outfit: “It’s about showing the professional side next year, offering opportunities, showing that we can achieve what we want to achieve before we take the big step.”

The reaction has been good so far, Dawson said: “When we announced it, we were sceptical about whether it would go well or not, but we’ve done really well. There has been a lot of support for it, people have been coming up at races to mention it, and the overall attitude is that we can make this work.”

However, the real work begins, with partners needed to make the dream a reality. Elite and under-23 riders are also encouraged to apply.

“We’re open to any kind of conversation,” Dawson said. “We need support from people, staff, riders, others that have gone through this process. Ideally, we’re looking to bring more sponsors, as Ride Revolution is currently the only one. We want to stay the same team, but we’re open to others coming on board. The more people we can get, the more hype we can create, the more chance we have of success.”

Swiss rider Stefan Küng (Tudor Pro Cycling) powered to victory on stage 18 of the 2026 Vuelta a España, during the second individual time trial stage of the race, crossing the line just two seconds faster than Callum Thornley (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe).

Race leader and local hero Enric Mas (Movistar), competing in his least-favourite discipline, put in a very strong ride and successfully defended his red jersey, fending off a predicted challenge from Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe), who started the day two minutes and 10 seconds behind him.

After posting the best time trial performance of his career, Mas placed 12th and lost just 33 seconds to Roglič. With just three stages left to go – two of them in his happy place, the mountains – the 31-year-old Spaniard has over a minute-and-a-half lead at the top of the general classification, and is in pole position to take an unexpected win on home soil.

Ultimately, Roglič finished fourth, behind third-placed João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG). Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), a pre-stage favourite, finished fifth. while Oscar Onley (Netcompany-Ineos) put in a solid performance to retain the white jersey.

The stage started with an interesting result, when 23-year-old Callum Thornley beat Ethan Hayter (Soudal Quick-Step) by 29 seconds, taking top spot. The young Scot sat on the leader's throne for a lengthy period of time, before Küng eventually unseated him, but only by a margin of 2.2 seconds.

"In the end you have to win, it doesn’t matter how big of a margin," said Küng in the post-stage interview. "I’m super happy to take the win here, I’m alone on the podium today but it’s a victory to the whole team, thanks to the guys behind me."

"Over the span of 32km you have to be dialled in from the start. When it’s such a fast time trial you cannot have any costly mistakes. When it’s so hard it’s also difficult to make a difference. I had a difficult moment after the second climb, and I misjudged a few corners there, but then I was able to get back into the rhythm, so that’s where I made the difference.

"It’s huge [for Tudor]. It was super good to see Marco [Brenner] winning. We’re roommates on this Vuelta so I think it’s a pretty good outcome for our room. We stand alone on the podium but there are so many people working hard behind the scenes. I want to thank all of them and all the people that got me back on track after my injury in February."

Vuelta a España 2026, stage 18 (ITT): El Puerto de Santa María > Jerez de la Frontera (32.1km)

1. Matthew Brennan (Gbr) Visma-Lease a Bike, in 3:56:33
2. Jordi Meeus (Bel) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe|
3. Magnus Cort (Den) Uno-X Mobility
4. Alessandro Romele (Ita) XDS Astana
5. Steffen De Schuyteneer (Bel) Lotto Intermarché
6. Axel Laurance (Fra) Netcompany-Ineos
7. Pau Miquel (Esp) Bahrain Victorious
8. César Maciás (Mex) Burgos Burpellet BH
9. Hugo Hofstetter (Fra) NSN Cycling
10. Bryan Coquard (Fra) Cofidis

General classification after stage 18

1. Enric Mas (Esp) Movistar Team, in 60:45:58
2. Primož Roglič (Slo) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, +1:37
3. Felix Gall (Aut) Decathlon CMA CGM, +3:01
4. Richard Carapaz (Ecu) EF Education-EasyPost, +5:17
5. Oscar Onley (GBr) Netcompany Ineos, +6:03
6. Jakob Omrzel (Slo) Bahrain Victorious, +7:00
7. Clément Berthet (Fra) Groupama-FDJ United, +7:47
8. Mattias Skjelmose (Den) Lidl-Trek, +7:51
9. Cristián Rodríguez (Spa) XDS Astana, +7:51
10. Harold Tejada (Col) XDS Astana, +9:57

While success in modern pro cycling requires an immense amount of work and planning, acting on the spur of the moment goes a long way too.

Powered by such spontaneity, Tom Pidcock stunned himself last Sunday.

After winning the MTB XCO World Championships in come-from-behind fashion at Val di Sole, the GP Industria & Artigianato one-day road race was hastily added to his schedule impromptu while he was barely off his flat-bar steed.

He went there to find his road legs, two months after his last hit-out on the tarmac, and left with another trophy in his carry-on luggage.

“That was kind of a surprise win. The momentum is nice, but I’ll take what comes. I’m just relaxed,” he told Cycling Weekly and other media in Québec on Wednesday night.

His back-to-back successes came despite a “hard road” from the Tour de France to his latest rainbow jersey.

“After the Tour, it was a bit weird feelings in general. I didn’t rush, I didn’t push myself, I trained hard the last few weeks before the MTB Worlds,” the Pinarello-Q36.5 rider said. “It took me a long time to feel good again. Longer than any other grand tour [has before]. It was three weeks really, we were just trying to build up some hours at a lower intensity.”

Making his debut in the brace of Canadian WorldTour events, Friday’s GP de Québec on Friday and GP de Montréal on Sunday provide opportunities to “carry on the momentum”. They are a puncheur’s paradise, defined by steep climbs that do not exceed two kilometres.

Pidcock will also have a valuable chance to race the lap on which the World Championships road race (27 September) will be decided by 12 circuits over Mont Royal, 1.6 kilometres at 7.7% gradient.

“It’s more of a goal,” Pidcock said of the World Championships. “Last year’s course didn’t suit me that well, this one suits me quite well. The Worlds is always going to be about [who has] the legs.”

The eight-strong Great Britain elite men’s line-up is yet to be announced, but Pidcock offered a sneak peek of the leading compatriots alongside him.

“We’ve been hit quite hard with people getting injured so I don’t know what the final team will be,” Pidcock said. “But I think we’ll have me, Adam [Yates] and Oscar [Onley], we have some pretty nice depth there, people who can play offensive roles.”

Relaxed and riding a wave of confidence; spearheading a strong team on a course that plays to his strengths; racing in a Tadej Pogačar-free peloton – this might just be Pidcock’s best chance of winning an elite road rainbow jersey.

“It opens the race up a lot,” he said of Pogačar’s absence. “I think everyone knows when Tadej is here, he and his team will dictate the race. Now I think it will be more, dare I say it, interesting, exciting.”

Although Pidcock has won five races on the road in 2026, despite missing several weeks of competition after a crash into a ravine at the Volta a Catalunya, he is not satisfied with his season.

“It would be nice to win a WorldTour race,” he said. “This season started well, then it was a bit crap in the middle. The Tour was good considering everything, but still I didn’t do that much. I want to try to finish the year off [well].”

Racing on the front foot in France at times, Pidcock came close to a stage win at the sport’s most prestigious race, his chances dented on stage nine by mechanical problems, and finished ninth overall.

His attacking, opportunistic nature can seem at odds with a GC contender’s need to weigh efforts carefully and race conservatively over three weeks. Grand tours do not strike as his most natural domain.

“It’s not the thing I enjoy the most, but it’s something I accept I need to do and try and do my best in,” Pidcock said. “I really enjoyed the Vuelta last year [where he finished third], that was good fun. The Tour was obviously a different beast, but this year was better, more enjoyable.”

The Briton’s road programme goes full bore to the end of the year, with the Giro dell’Emilia, Tre Valli Varesine and Il Lombardia before a planned Tour of Guangxi debut.

“We have team camp the week after Il Lombardia, so otherwise I’m going to have a week that I can’t do anything so might as well race that week!”

Whatever happens in Canada, another world title seems certain for a British champion who gives himself options because of his aplomb in road, MTB, gravel and cyclo-cross.

While there will be no trip to Australia next month for the Gravel World Championships, Pidcock mentioned wanting to go for that race when it suits him better.

Although he does not think he’ll compete in cyclo-cross this winter, Pidcock added he “thinks he would” come back to the discipline if it got a place in the Winter Olympics.

Given the IOC’s May announcement that it will not be in the 2030 Games, he and CX fans will likely be in for a minimum eight-year wait.

"Sprinters always have plenty of opportunities to shine in their specialist discipline but rarely has one of their number enjoyed the kind of absolute dominance that he now wields."

These words are not about Matthew Brennan, who has won five stages at this year's Vuelta a España, his debut Grand Tour, but very well could be. The 21-year-old has looked unbeatable in sprint finishes across Spain, becoming the youngest rider ever to win five Grand Tour stages, the latest coming on Thursday in Seville, as he continued to make everything look easy.

The above quote, written by Richard Williams in The Guardian in 2009, was about Mark Cavendish – long before he was a knight – after he won his sixth and final stage of that year's Tour de France. At that year's race, the 24-year-old was leagues ahead of everyone else in fast finishes, popping out at exactly the right time as the line approached, then accelerating out of sight.

Brennan has aped this at the Vuelta, timing his efforts to perfection, and winning by a bike length as he crosses the line, such that he's almost gaining time on his rivals. This might be the sprinter-unfriendly Vuelta, and most of the other best fast-men in the world might be elsewhere, but you can only beat what's in front of you, and Brennan has been demolishing the available competition. One sprint win in his first three-week race would have been impressive, but to take five, the final two deep into the third week, shows that he doesn't just have the speed, he has the endurance.

The comparisons to Cavendish have been rolling in, understandably so. They're roughly the same height (although Brennan is taller, importantly) and have both stormed into the public consciousness by dominating sprints at Grand Tours. However, these comparisons are arguably overly simplistic, and understood to not find favour with Brennan himself; this makes sense, given he is his own man, with his own future.

They are different riders, and I really think Brennan could be even better than Cavendish. Perhaps not in terms of sheer magnitude of victories, given Cavendish won 165 times, including a record 35 times at the Tour de France, but perhaps in terms of the breadth of wins. That said, Brennan has already won 23 professional victories at 21; Cavendish was yet to open his account at the same age. The future is bright.

Brennan might look like an out-and-out speed merchant at this Vuelta, but he is a more versatile rider. The man from Darlington is still developing on the bike, but he looks like he has more of a punch than a pure sprinter, and could target the Classics as much as bunch finishes; he won Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurnes this year, and it isn't too much of a reach to imagine him winning Paris-Roubaix.

Stage 13 of this year's Vuelta was evidence of Brennan's versatility, as he was the perfect teammate to Wout van Aert in the breakaway, marking moves, chasing down attackers, and setting up the Belgian to take victory. It's not something that Cavendish made a habit of, becoming a domestique for the day, but Brennan is clearly willing and able to use his talent in the service of others.

There was some concern that Brennan would never be able to back up his stunning debut season, with 2025 bringing 12 pro wins, which is why we chose him as Cycling Weekly's male rider of the year, but this has been dispelled. He has not only matched his tally from last year, but shown off on one of the biggest stages of them all.

Next year's Tour de France begins in Edinburgh, with a bunch sprint expected in Carlisle. The level will be higher, with the world's best sprinters present, and immense pressure, but there is a real possibility of Brennan pulling on yellow after winning his first Tour stage on home soil. Imagine the pandemonium.

On Thursday, he said: "I think it's a really good stepping stone for next year's ambitions, and it gives me a lot of confidence to just be in the peloton with all these good guys. It's an unbelievable situation we're in."

Brennan is the real deal, and these five victories are no fluke, no flat-track century. There are sterner tests to come, but Matthew Brennan is here, and is the future of British cycling. Tell your friends at the pub, and remember the name – the hype. He had better start believing

“Project Canada”, as he dubbed it on Strava during training, is go for Remco Evenepoel.

In the absence of Tadej Pogačar, the Belgian superstar is the man to beat. He could make history later this month in Montréal by becoming the first elite male rider to win the World Championships time trial and road race in the same year.

First, he wants to add Friday’s Grand Prix de Québec and Sunday’s Grand Prix de Montréal to his packed palmarès. He has crossed the Atlantic looking lean and keen, adapting himself more for the short, sharp hills which characterise the one-day races.

“I think it’s clear you need to have a bit more explosiveness for them, so we wanted that. We’ve trained a bit more on the sprint,” he said, speaking to the media on Wednesday night in Québec, a light blue cap worn backwards on his head.

Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe’s leader has not raced since winning the Clásica de San Sebastián on 1 August, spending three and a half weeks at altitude in the Italian town of Livigno. Only coming down from his lofty preparation perch a few days ago, Evenepoel is unsure how his body will react.

“He [coach Tim Heemskerk] told me I shouldn’t panic if one of these races doesn’t go so good,” he said.

“It’s always a bit different, harder to manage the fatigue and sessions [after altitude], but in general, everything went well. There’s still a bit of time, more than two weeks, to be in the best possible form for the World Championships.”

The absence of Tadej Pogačar, recovering from the broken collarbone sustained at the Vuelta a España, will give the Canadian events a different flavour.

“I’ve been there too; in 2020, I was in good form, I won everything and then I missed the start of the Worlds [after a serious crash in Il Lombardia], and then someone else takes it,” he said.

“It changes the race a lot, but that’s how it is now. You have to take your chance and push for victory. When Tadej is there, everyone wants to defend or just follow him. It’s not easy. You need to come up with new tactics.”

Competing in the GP de Québec and GP de Montréal double-header for the first time since 2019, he is keen to find his “best legs and best sensations” in a return to competition.

Evenepoel stressed that the WorldTour one-day races are more than mere amuse-bouches for the rainbow jersey main courses. “I’m coming in with a lot of ambition: these are races I’ve never won and I’d like to add them to my palmarès,” he said, adding later: “Why not win them both?”

You can hardly blame Evenepoel for feeling confident. As well as quietening a few naysayers, second place to Pogačar at the Tour de France reinforced his ambitions to add the sport’s blue riband race and the Giro d’Italia to his stuffed palmarès.

“I think I proved to myself and also to everyone else – I’ve won the Vuelta, been on the Tour podium twice. The results are there – I’ve got a future in the grand tours.

“I always believed that, I think there were some who didn’t. That gave me a lot of motivation for the Tour with a very specific, very precise preparation without a lot of racing … the dream to win the three grand tours is still there.”

Evenepoel is the original 2020s prodigy, a young force of nature who has lived up to the hype created when he swept through junior races like the second coming of Eddy Merckx.

Given he went straight from competing against 17-year-olds to beating adult pros for Quick Step as a teenager, he could see the irony of being asked about Michael Matthews’ assertion that riders turn pro in the WorldTour too young.

“It’s not down to me to say because I was one of the first to go straight from the junior ranks,” he said, smiling. “There are a lot who turn pro with zero junior wins, or one or two races. Me, I won 37 or 38 out of 45 … it’s true that young riders turn pro a lot quicker than before. But they already live like pros with their nutrition, training, the power meter – they’re a lot more prepared than I was back in the day. I didn’t have a power meter or nutritionist, it was really done by feel.”

“I think that’s a bit problematic now because when they get to the pro ranks, that’s when the sacrifices really need to be made. And after some years, we see some young riders cracking mentally because they don’t know how to make those sacrifices anymore.”

There will be plenty of sacrifices made in the World Championships road race in Montréal, with Belgian teammates burying themselves for their captain.

Visma-Lease a Bike rider Wout van Aert has also been selected, offering a potential Plan B. The squad will need to be united and well-drilled as other nations may will look to expose any weaknesses.

“He’s found good form at the right moment, it’s also a while until the road race so he has to keep it,” Evenepoel said of his compatriot, who has two Vuelta stage wins. “But I think he has the experience to handle that period between the Vuelta and the World Championships road race. It’s nice to see he’s ready.”

The 2026 Vuelta a España goes into crunch time over the coming days with the individual time trial on Thursday 10 September, preceding two big days in the mountains before the finale in Granada.

Stage 18's 32.1km time trial will help decide the direction of the race's overall classification, as there is just 2:10 minutes separating the top three riders. Anyone with GC ambitions, be it the podium or the top ten, will need to bring their A-game. It is also the last chance for time trial specialists to win a stage, the first since the opening day in Monaco, and for the teams left with nothing to show from the race in the wake of Visma Lease-a-bike and UAE winning 10 of the 17 stages so far.

With stage one victor – Tadej Pogačar, remember him? – absent, the stage is clear for someone else to step up, whether that be a TT specialist like Ethan Hayter (Soudal Quick-Step) or Stefan Küng (Tudor Pro Cycling), or a GC rider who is strong against the clock, like Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe).

With just over 150m of climbing in today's 32.1km effort, it is almost certainly a stage for the specialists who have spent time warming down in their TT positions after stages. How leader Enric Mas does will also be key. The Spanish climber typically loses time in flat time trials - 3:51 minutes in 42km to Jonas Vingegaard at the Giro d'Italia this May - but with the red jersey to defend, and home fans behind him, will have added motivation to apply himself.

The timing points come at 11.5km and 22km. The first rider will be the lanterne rouge, or last man on general classification, Mathias Norsgaard (Lidl-Trek) at 2:07pm CEST (1:07pm BST/8:07am EDT), with riders the heading out at minute intervals until Raúl García Pierna (Movistar) at 4:15pm CEST, at which time there will be two-minute gaps all the way to Enric Mas (Movistar) at 4:55pm CEST.

Favourites to look out for include Hayter, Küng, Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X Mobility), Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), Roglič and João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

Vuelta a España stage 18 ITT start times

Matthew Brennan stormed to a historic fifth stage win at the Vuelta a España on Wednesday, winning stage 17 in Seville.

Visma-Lease a Bike's British sprinter became the first fast man to win five stages in the same Grand Tour since Marcel Kittel in 2017, and won for the second day in a row to boot. All in his debut Grand Tour. He is the youngest rider to ever win five Grand Tour stages, and the younger rider to win back-to-back Vuelta stages.

The bunch sprint was closer than other days, with Jordi Meeus (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) looking good until being pipped at the last, with Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility) finishing in third.

21-year-old Brennan's win also marked Visma-Lease a Bike's seventh win of this Vuelta, their biggest haul ever, with Wout van Aert winning two stages. It was a slightly more complicated bunch sprint with previous days, with Brennan being dropped off by his deluxe leadout man Van Aert earlier, onto the wheel of Cort, before he fully opened up with around 150m to go and was not caught again.

There were lessons taken after Van Aert finished second in a sprint in Seville in 2024, Brennan explained.

"We discussed it in the morning, the bits where he went wrong," he said on TV post-race. "We didn't want to repeat that today, we wanted to make sure that we crossed the line first. He was there by my side the whole way, which was fantastic to see, and I'm very thankful for his support."

The stage was not simple, despite there being no categorised climbs, with a threat of wind throughout, but everything came together for a bunch sprint in the end. The day's breakaway consisted of two riders, Enzo Paleni (Groupama-FDJ United) and Sinuhé Fernández (Burgos Burpellet BH), with the former the last to be caught.

"It's unbelievably special," Brennan told Eurosport later. "We have had so many big names coming through the team and trying to achieve the same thing we have, and we've come to this race with a plan to win some stages. But it was never treally in anyone's mind to break this record. We sat down yesterday and said we needed to do something now and break the record. Also now, Frans Maassen has to stand up in the dinner hall and do his thing. Something humiliating.

"I don't think I fully believe it yet," he continued. "Five Vuelta stages, that doesn't really sit well in my head. It's a lot of victories. But I also stand here with some of the best bike riders in the peloton. For myself, it's unbelievable. In two or three weeks time I still won't believe I've won five victories, but also that's OK. Maybe a couple of weeks on from that I will believe or look back and think that was pretty impressive.

"When I try and get into the same shape again and think 'this is getting hard now, how on earth did I win five stages, I'm crawling'. I think it's a really good stepping stone for next year's ambitions, and it gives me a lot of confidence to just be in the peloton with all these good guys. It's an unbelievable situation we're in.

"I know what this bike race is. The three races I knew were the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta. I knew what I was signing up for this year and it's spectacular. We're here in Sevilla and I just won a big bunch sprint. It's a beautiful situation to be in."

Vuelta a España 2026, stage 17: Dos Hermanas > Seville (185km)

1. Matthew Brennan (Gbr) Visma-Lease a Bike, in 3:56:33
2. Jordi Meeus (Bel) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe
3. Magnus Cort (Den) Uno-X Mobility
4. Alessandro Romele (Ita) XDS Astana
5. Steffen De Schuyteneer (Bel) Lotto Intermarché
6. Axel Laurance (Fra) Netcompany-Ineos
7. Pau Miquel (Esp) Bahrain Victorious
8. César Maciás (Mex) Burgos Burpellet BH
9. Hugo Hofstetter (Fra) NSN Cycling
10. Bryan Coquard (Fra) Cofidis

General classification after stage 17

1. Enric Mas (Esp) Movistar Team, in 56:02:29
2. Felix Gall (Aut) Decathlon CMA CGM, +2:06
3. Primož Roglič (Slo) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, +2:10
4. Richard Carapaz (Ecu) EF Education-EasyPost, +4:24
5. Oscar Onley (GBr) Netcompany Ineos, +5:44
6. Jakob Omrzel (Slo) Bahrain Victorious, +6:14
7. Mattias Skjelmose (Den) Lidl-Trek, +6:49
8. Cristián Rodríguez (Spa) XDS Astana, +7:01
9. Clément Berthet (Fra) Groupama-FDJ United, +7:19
10. Sepp Kuss (USA) Visma-Lease a Bike, +8:55