The Road World Championships are chaos, and that’s what makes them special, even if this year’s courses left a lot to be desired

I don’t love golf. In my experience, it’s largely a stuffy sport for men I don’t really hang out with – aside from some notable exceptions. It’s also a great way of spoiling nature, and in the UK, takes up a lot of private land. However, over the weekend I found myself captivated by the Ryder Cup, which seems to be like golf, except with all the boring bits ejected. Rather than playing as individuals, they play as Europe vs the USA, they wear different kits than usual, and they play in a format they don’t normally use. It’s not normal golf, and that’s what makes it fun, even if it is a bit confusing.

I hope this is how outsiders see cycling’s UCI Road World Championships. It’s every year as opposed to the Ryder Cup’s biennial occurrence, but it is always a welcome difference. Unlike almost every race a year, there are no trade teams, riders use different kits, teams are national mashups, no race radios, and a brand new unique course is used. It isn’t normal cycling, it’s chaos, and that’s why I love it so much.

It throws up unexpected scenarios, like Canada’s Magdeleine Vallieres’ victory in the elite women’s road race, while the best riders in the world just watched each other, and also creates the stage for incredible performances, like those of Tadej Pogačar and Harry Hudson in the elite and junior men’s road races, respectively.

Adam Becket

News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com - should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.

There’s a lot of cycling that always happens in a similar way or looks the same, from the Tour of Flanders to sprint stages at the Tour de France, so to throw in a completely different kind of event once a year is good. I know I spend a lot of time saying cycling should make more sense for the casual or new fan, but to have something this wild once a year is not a complete juxtaposition; it’s an exception, not a rule.

A change the World Championships brings, as does the Ryder Cup, is a bit of tribalism that is often lacking in cycling – I really do want GB to succeed most of the time, as I was cheering on Europe in the golf. This is not something I usually feel when watching pro cycling, but it’s nice to cheer for your country, as is common in other sports.

The courses are a big part of what make the Worlds. They are fresh every year, in a different country, in Kigali’s case on a new continent, and test riders in a similar but distinct way. Sure, they ordinarily favour the best puncheur in the world as opposed to the best overall cyclist, but that’s no bad thing. Puncheurs are the most exciting kind of cyclist, and attacking is good. A fun thought experiment is to imagine where the Worlds would go if it came to your city – in Bristol, England, I’m sending the peloton up some nasty hills. It would be good.

The tradition and repetition that make moments in other races so good – the left turn at the top of the Oude Kwaremont in the Tour of Flanders, the Via Santa Caterina in Strade Bianche – are absent in the Worlds, and once a year, that’s novel and positive. You quickly have to get used to new notable parts of the course, as the Cote de Kimihurura provided in Kigali this year.

All that said, I did feel that the course at this year’s Worlds could have been a bit more exciting; the elite women did 11 laps of the same 15km-long circuit, making it feel like a big crit race rather than a road race. The elite men were the only road race to leave the circuit, and that was the best bit, providing the key moment on Mont Kigali, when Pogačar attacked with 104km to go. Only the men did the Mur de Kigali. Could the women not have done this extra loop too?

Photographer Zac Williams, there on the ground for SWpix, wrote on Instagram: “The Mur de Kigali was truly remarkable. The fans, thicker even than those on a Sunday afternoon in springtime Belgium made for a spectacle that had to be experienced to be believed. Only doing that climb once in the entire championships, to me, seems like a huge shame.”

There were surely contextual reasons for this, but in terms of showing off Kigali, it felt like there were opportunities missed. The men’s route also seemed like a course designed for Pogačar to attack from that far out; perhaps it is time to think about Tadej-proofing routes as golf courses were Tiger-proofed during Tiger Woods’s years of domination. It was also probably too hard – 30 riders finishing the men’s race feels like evidence of this.

I’m excited for Montréal 2026 already, just like I'm excited for Adare Manor 2027. Once a year, taking the cycling we know and changing a lot of it creates special moments.

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