Friends, EuroTrash is a-changing — at least, the Thursday version will.
Don’t worry: Every Monday morning you’ll still be able to catch up on all the cycling news, from Grand Tours to obscure races, to transfers, injuries, signings, social media gaffes…all the news we fanboys (and girls) like to keep up on.
Then on Thursdays, we’ll go deep, looking at the Three Stories the cycling world is talking about — and the one topic I’m thinking about. Plus Ride of the Week…plenty of fodder for discussion, debate and deliberation.
Want to help craft our first Big Three Thursday? Send your thoughts to mike@pezcyclingnews.com!
TOP STORY
- With Tadej out, Who’s your Pick for Worlds?
RACE NEWS
- Wellens Wraps Up Tour of Britain Title as Politt Salutes His Grandfather in Earlston
- Visma’s Hobbs Enters the Top Young Riders Conversation with ZLM Win
-
Pidcock Doubles Down: MTB World Champ Solos to Victory at GP Industria & Artigianato
RIDER, TEAM AND CYCLING NEWS
- Wout Continues his Upwards Trajectory
- Who Is Jakob Omrzel?
VIDEO
- The Changing Lenses of POVEC’s C1 Sunglasses
With Tadej out, Who’s your Pick for Worlds?
Well, that’s that. On Saturday, UAE Team Emirates-XRG confirmed what most of the peloton had feared since Stage 8 of the Vuelta a España: Tadej Pogačar’s season is over. The two-time defending World Champion suffered a fractured collarbone, a stable C7 cervical fracture, a concussion, and facial cuts when he hit a rock and went down hard with 32km to go in Spain. Surgery followed, recovery has reportedly gone well, but there will be no hat-trick bid in Montréal. No European Championships on home Slovenian roads, either. No Lombardia. (I was certain we were going to see a heroic return at Euros in Tadej’s homeland. I still think it’s a possibility.)
“Of course, this isn’t the way I wanted my season to finish,” Pogačar said in the team’s statement. “Right now, the most important thing is to recover properly and give my body the time it needs.”
There was a silver lining buried in the bad news for UAE fans: Pogačar used the moment to announce a contract extension through 2032, keeping cycling’s best rider in Emirati red through the back half of his career. “From the beginning, this team has felt like home for me,” he said. And here I was certain he was going to stealth his way onto the start line at the Euros in his home country.
Together through 2032. @TamauPogi
UAE Team Emirates-XRG is proud to announce that Tadej Pogačar has extended his contract with the team through the end of the 2032 season.
“From the beginning, this team has felt like home to me. We’ve grown together over the years and… pic.twitter.com/swZZJgFFdb
— @UAE-TeamEmirates (@TeamEmiratesUAE) September 5, 2026
I’m sorely disappointed; we fans want exciting racing, but we also want the best to show for the biggest races. The Montréal course was already relatively democratic before Pogačar’s exit: a 112.4km run through the Montérégie followed by twelve laps of the Mount Royal circuit, the same 13.4km loop used for the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal. The Côte Camillien-Houde (1.8km at 8%) and Côte de Polytechnique, with ramps over 11%, will shred the pack early, but this isn’t Zurich or Kigali-level brutal. It rewards a strong classics rider with a punch, not necessarily a pure climber. That changes the math (or maths, to our European friends).
Typically Mathieu van der Poel would be my pick. He only loses on courses like this Worlds route to Pogačar, and after a Tour where he rode typically both supportively and powerfully, he’s been focusing his training on getting his title back. That said…
Wout van Aert is on a tear right now. After an exceptionally up-and-down year (see below), my question is less about these respective riders — in recent years, van der Poel has had Wout’s number on similar courses — but about their preparation: Has MVDP’s focused training put him in the better position, or will Wout ride his Vuelta fitness to victory?
Remco Evenepoel has also been prepping especially for this race, and he’ll want to atone for past near-misses, and to achieve a rare RR/TT double. The punchy course doesn’t suit his aero bullet strengths, but he’s not to be counted out.
Don’t sleep on Tom Pidcock, who has the explosiveness for the finishing kicker on Avenue du Parc, or Ben Healy, who’s looking to atone for a relatively disappointing season. And we haven’t heard from Paul Seixas for a while; recall that he performed very well on a similarly punchy Strade Bianche course.
With the head of the field gone, this looks like the most wide-open Worlds road race in years.
Now it’s your turn — who wins the rainbow jersey in Montréal?
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.
RACE NEWS
Wellens Wraps Up Tour of Britain Title as Politt Salutes His Grandfather in Earlston
Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates – XRG) confirmed the overall win at the 2026 Lloyds Tour of Britain Men in his very first appearance at the race, as UAE Team Emirates delivered another masterclass on stage five into Earlston, this time punctuated by an emotional solo victory from Nils Politt.
Wellens had already done the heavy lifting the day before in North Yorkshire, so Saturday’s job for UAE was simple: defend. The stage began with a guard of honour for the retiring Ben Swift, before a four-man break went clear featuring King of the Mountains leader Michal Schuran (Team United Shipping), Ben Wiggins, Jonah Killy and Marcus Sander. Schuran mopped up maximum points on the day’s first two climbs, Redstone Rig and Duddy Bank, putting the polka dot jersey out of reach.
It was on the run-in to Duddy Bank that UAE went to work, matching a Netcompany INEOS attack and splitting the peloton with five riders on the front. By the final climb at Hardens Hill, an elite group had formed, and Filippo Ganna cashed in twice at the intermediate sprints to grab the points jersey and bonus seconds.
The finale belonged to Politt, though. With the bunch expected to sprint it out, UAE sent him clear inside the last seven kilometres, and he built a 30-second gap he never gave back, soloing to the line and pointing skyward in tribute to his grandfather, who died recently.
Behind, Lewis Askey (NSN Cycling Team) held second overall and topped the British rider standings, while Jasper Stuyven (Fix All Quick-Step) slotted onto the final podium step. Schuran’s breakaway work also earned him the race’s overall combativity award, Elliot Rowe took the young rider classification, and UAE Team Emirates – XRG claimed the best team prize.
“It was a very successful week,” said Wellens afterward. “We came here for the GC, and today we also have this stage victory, so everything’s been perfect.” Politt was more personal: “This victory is for my grandpa. He passed away some weeks ago, so I need to give him something.”
Visma’s Hobbs Enters the Top Young Riders Conversation with ZLM Win
Yet another young rider to keep your eye on: Henry Hobbs handed Visma | Lease a Bike a surprise stage win on the final day of the ZLM Tour. At just 19, the British sprinter became only the second rider born in 2007 to win a professional race, following Red Bull’s Alessio Magagnotti. Speaking to Wielerflits, Hobbs admitted the timing caught him off guard, saying he hadn’t expected a win this soon given the strength of the field.
The victory came as a bonus rather than the plan. Visma | Lease a Bike had brought several Development riders to the ZLM Tour, Hobbs included, with the primary goal of gaining experience racing alongside the team’s more seasoned pros over five demanding days that included a time trial and multiple crosswind stages.
Despite that fatigue, Hobbs had enough left in the tank on the final stage to outsprint veterans including Max Walscheid, David Dekker, and Danny van Poppel. He described the pair closing in beside him late in the sprint, but said he found just enough extra power to hold them off.
Hobbs is the younger brother of Noah Hobbs, an established EF Education-EasyPost sprinter, and has ambitions of his own on the track, including a possible Olympic path. Asked whether he or his brother is faster, Hobbs noted the two have never raced head-to-head, though that could change as soon as next season.
Team manager Arthur van Dongen was equally caught off guard by the result, calling it unexpected for a first-year U23 rider to dominate a race as tough as the ZLM Tour. Having worked with Hobbs for only a week, Van Dongen described him as composed and clear-eyed about his own ambitions, adding that the team may have unearthed another serious talent for the future.
Pidcock Doubles Down: MTB World Champ Solos to Victory at GP Industria & Artigianato
I’ll let you in on a secret: When deciding what to include in EuroTrash, I first scan the list of the week’s races. I typically only research and write about the ones I’ve heard of. But I also always scan the podiums, and if a rider jumps out, even from some race I’d never before noticed, I’ll afford it some pixels.
Hence, here’s what happened at the GP Industria & Artigianato.
Turns out the name attached to this obscure little Tuscan semi-classic is Tom Pidcock, a fellow who, last time I checked, was busy winning the mountain bike world championship. That was seven days ago. Evidently a rainbow jersey wasn’t enough to satisfy him for the week, so he turned up in Larciano and won this one too, solo, because apparently that’s just what he does now.
The race itself dates back to the 1970s and traditionally opens Italy’s autumn classics campaign: roughly 196km of looping around Larciano, with the Tuscan hills doing their best to soften everyone up before a decisive double-dose of San Baronto (8.2km at 3.5%) and Mungherino (6.2km at 6%) on the final circuit.
A nine-man break got the standard five-minutes-plus of freedom early doors, the way these things go, before the climbs and kilometers chewed the group down to nothing by the last trip up San Baronto. That set the stage for the real action: on the Mungherino, Pidcock simply rode off from everyone else and didn’t come back. Christian Scaroni (XDS Astana) won the six-man sprint for the scraps, 12 seconds back, with Anthon Charmig (Uno-X Mobility) taking third.
So there you have it: a podium I’d never have clocked if not for a familiar name doing very familiar things. If I’d researched this race and written this article before the one above, about who will win Worlds, would I have predicted differently? Likely not, but the race in Montréal is looking more interesting all the time.
RIDER, TEAM AND CYCLING NEWS
Wout Continues his Upwards Trajectory
Just a week ago I shared a simple graphic conveying the dizzyingly up-and-down nature of Wout van Aert’s year, starting with promise on the ‘cross course and an ensuing fractured ankle, and proceeding through Milan-Sanremo, Paris-Roubaix, hospitalization with an acute infection, and a return to strength at the Vuelta a España.
You’ll see below that I’ve added a dot, because Wout’s autumn is only getting better. He and his Visma team have had the run of the Vuelta’s non-mountain stages, their 1-2 punch of van Aert and Brennan virtually winning at will. Wout’s now taken two stages, and he’s done it with panache: bridging gaps, powering breaks, winning small-bunch sprints. Regardless of what happens at Worlds, we’d call this a banner year for WVA.
Who Is Jakob Omrzel?
So get this: The 2025 Slovenian national road champion isn’t named Tadej Pogačar or Primož Roglič. He’s not even named Matej Mohorič or Jan Tratnik.
He’s one Jakob Omrzel, a name you likely hadn’t heard, notwithstanding that national title, until he ascended to a triumphant stage 12 victory at the Vuelta a España.
Just 20 years old, Omrzel arrives with a résumé that already reads like a highlight reel in miniature. As a junior he was considered one of Slovenia’s biggest cycling prospects, twice claiming the national junior road race title and winning Paris–Roubaix Juniors. That cobbled pedigree hints at a rider who can suffer as well as climb, a useful trait for what came later.
His path wasn’t without a genuine scare. In 2024, he suffered a serious crash at the Giro della Lunigiana, colliding with a race signalman and requiring resuscitation on the roadside. That he returned to racing at all speaks to his resilience; that he’s now a Grand Tour stage winner speaks to his talent.
Riding for Bahrain Victorious, Omrzel built a strong 2025-26 stretch — a national road title, strong showings at the Tour of Slovenia, and steady progress against the sport’s best under-23 riders. Then came Calar Alto. Emerging from a sprawling breakaway stacked with proven talent, he attacked with kilometers still to go and simply rode away, soloing to the win with time to spare and vaulting into the top ten overall.
The comparisons wrote themselves almost instantly: at 20, he’s now Slovenia’s youngest-ever Grand Tour stage winner, edging past a benchmark once held by Pogačar himself.
Slovenia has spent the last several years producing riders who redefine what’s possible on a bike. It’s far too early to hang that weight on Omrzel’s shoulders. But on a mountaintop in Andalusia, he gave us a glimpse of why we might, one day soon, be talking about him in exactly that company.
VIDEO
- The Changing Lenses of POVEC’s C1 Sunglasses
The PEZ featured video is a short one this week, but pretty fun: Check out how the POVEC C1 sunglasses changes lenses with the swipe of a finger (and check me out trying to hold them steady while swiping).
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The post EUROTRASH: Who’s Your Pick for an Open Worlds? appeared first on PezCycling News.
