Who’s with me here: Was that a fantastic Worlds week or what?
Call me crazy — Tim Wellens — but I love a week of riders contending in their national kits, in races that throw typical tactics out the window. Not that Worlds always produces a surprise winner — as it didn’t in this year’s women’s elite race —but mix together the distance, the unfamiliar teams, and some end-of-season fatigue, and every once in a while you get a Ballan, a Costa, a Kwiatkowski — or even a McNulty.
Richard’s been in Montréal catching not just bike races, but a lot of local color as well. Be sure to check out his videos on our YouTube channel and our Instagram page.
The season isn’t over, but I always mark Worlds as the beginning of the wind-down. It’s been quite a campaign, with some glories and some sorrows.
How many days until Omloop Nieuwsblad?
TOP STORY
- Worlds Road Roundup: What to Know about Each Race
RACE NEWS
- Where in the World Are Upcoming Worlds?
- Worlds Week Sideshow: Here’s what the Sprinters Have Been Doing
- Guercilena Sets Out Vision for a Bolder, More Independent Giro d’Italia
- Radios or no Radios? Team Belgium Had a Solution
TEAM AND RIDER NEWS
- But…Where was Sepp?
- So Much for No Longer Glorifying Crashing…
Worlds Road Roundup: What to Know about Each Race
Richard’s been on the ground in Montréal since Wednesday; if you haven’t been following his posts, definitely check them out.
In case you weren’t able to follow along, though, here’s an update on every road race — everything you need to know, from the youngsters to the WorldTour elites.
Junior Men — Benjamín Noval (Spain)
Podium: Benjamín Noval (Spain) · Simon Defrance (France), +0:42 · Elias Wandel (Sweden), +2:12
Noval had unfinished business, having crashed out of gold contention in Kigali last year, and left no doubt this time, bridging a 1:45 gap solo before dropping everyone else with two laps to go. He becomes the first rider to double up in the junior TT and road race since a guy named Remco Evenepoel did it in 2018. Not bad company. And the pedigree runs deep: Noval is the son of an elite pro, and on this evidence he may be building a palmarès that outstrips his father’s.
Junior Women — Alejandra Neira (Spain)
Podium: Alejandra Neira (Spain) · Matilde Rossignoli (Italy), s.t. · Anja Grossmann (Switzerland), s.t.
Spain went two-for-two in the junior ranks. Neira’s win came out of a frantic, tactic-free finale — a three-up move got swallowed by two chasers inside the final kilometers, and the podium was settled in a five-rider drag race up Avenue du Parc. She’s also the third straight Canyon-sponsored rider to win this title, following Cat Ferguson (2024) and Paula Ostiz (2025).
U23 Men — Ashlin Barry (USA)
Podium: Ashlin Barry (USA) · Héctor Álvarez (Spain), +0:53 · Jesper Stiansen (Norway)
Barry wasn’t many people’s pick heading in, but he rode a savvy, gutsy race, attacking from a breakaway some 30 kilometers out and simply staying away. It’s the first U23 road title for an American rider ever, and North America’s first medal in the event since 2010. Extra flourish: he did it on his 19th birthday, with his parents — his father, former pro Michael Barry, and his mother, Olympic TT silver medalist Dede Demet-Barry — watching at the finish.
U23 Women — Viktória Chladoňová (Slovakia)
Podium: Viktória Chladoňová (Slovakia) · Isabella Holmgren (Canada), s.t. · Fleur Moors (Belgium), +0:33
Redemption tour for Chladoňová, who was runner-up in this race last year and had already missed the TT podium in Montréal by fractions of a second before finally getting hers. She and home favorite Holmgren went clear together 31km out and traded blows to the line, with Chladoňová coming around in the sprint, denying Canada a home title in front of its own crowd.
Elite Women — Demi Vollering (Netherlands)
Podium: Demi Vollering (Netherlands) · Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Poland), s.t. · Elisa Longo Borghini (Italy), +0:04
This was just a fantastic race. Had it not been for a massive early crash that slowed or took out more than a quarter of the field, including 2025 World Champ Magdeleine Vallieres, this might have been the perfect race. When’s the last time you saw a rider throw down an emphatic, possibly decisive attack, get caught — and go on to win? That’s what Demi Vollering managed, and that’s what made this race thrilling to watch.
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Elite Men — Brandon McNulty (USA)
Podium: Brandon McNulty (USA) – Michael Matthews (Australia), + 0:13 – Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands), + 0:13
Another excellent race, though this one very much did not play out as you predicted:
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Nor did it play out as anyone whom Richard cornered in Montreal predicted:
Instead, the favorites either had jours sans (Evenepoel, Seixas, van Aert) or overplayed their hands (MVDP, del Toro), or simply didn’t have a team plan that left them with options. To paraphrase Mike Tyson, each of those favorites got proverbially punched in the mouth — except the USA, which managed the race masterfully. When I wondered whether this race would favor the classics specialists or the climbers, I left out the other class: the smart time trialists. McNulty stayed just close enough while the big guns fired early and often, and just as it appeared that they’d spent their bullets…he fired his own, and it only took one.
Whatever you do, be sure to watch Richard’s right-place-right-time video from the finish line!
RACE NEWS
Where in the World Are Upcoming Worlds?
Already looking forward to the next World Championships — and the next ones, and the next ones…?
Here’s the UCI’s list of upcoming editions, starting next year in France, with what’s sure to be a mountainous welcome back party for Tadej Pogačar — and then Abu Dhabi in the UAE, where the sprinters should finally have their day.
- 2027: Haute-Savoie Mont-Blanc, France —combining 20 different UCI World Championships.
- 2028: Abu Dhabi, UAE
- 2029: Denmark (likely centering in Copenhagen)
- 2030: Brussels, Belgium.
- 2031: Trentino, Italy. This will be the third “Super Worlds” after Glasgow 2023 and Haute-Savoie 2027, bringing all disciplines together.
- 2032: Pune, India
- 2034: Groningen and Drenthe, Netherlands
Worlds Week Sideshow: Here’s What the Sprinters Have been Doing
While the Worlds circus was rolling along, the rest of the peloton still had bills to pay (especially the sprinters). Here’s what happened while you weren’t looking.
Langkawi: Malucelli Wins Stage 1 by a Whisker
The 30th Le Tour de Langkawi kicked off with 193km from Shah Alam to Kampar. It was hot, sticky and always going to end in a bunch sprint. Matteo Malucelli (XDS Astana) took it, but only just. Riley Pickrell, making his Langkawi debut with Modern Adventure, was glued to his wheel all the way to a photo finish, with Fernando Gaviria third.
Malucelli crashed in training the day before, so he rolled up to the start line banged up, then went out and won anyway. That’s win number 23 for the Italian, and he now wears the orange jersey and the blue sprint jersey. Tomorrow could bring a rude awakening: It’s the Gunung Jerai summit finish, 10.7km at 9.1%, and the first of three mountaintop finales. Sprinters will be checking the time limit.
CRO Race: The Dane Who Did It All in Red
Tobias Svarre (Uno-X Mobility) won the CRO Race, his first pro GC win. He grabbed the lead by winning the queen stage 3, then hung on to a four-second cushion over Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious) all the way to Zagreb. Pre-race favorite Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) took third at eight seconds. Uno-X also won stage 2, where Carl-Frederik Bévort pulled off a surprise first pro win.
The other stage winners:
- Stage 1: Juan Sebastián Molano
- Stage 4: Daniel Felipe Martínez, ending a two-year drought
- Stage 5: Paul Magnier
- Stage 6: Davide Donati
Magnier tried for a repeat on the final day, but he hit the front way too early and Donati simply sat on his wheel and came around him. Donati is still on Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe’s Rookies squad, which won’t last long. He has four pro wins and a WorldTour contract surely waiting for 2027. Lorenzo De Longhi (Cofidis) also got the better of Magnier for second.
Paris-Chauny: Bittner Wins, Taminiaux Party Ends Early
Paris-Chauny gave us the best comedy of the week. After 203.6km, and after Lambrecht and Jacobs hung out front until 900 meters to go, the bunch sprint came down to Lionel Taminiaux (Lotto-Intermarché) and Pavel Bittner (Picnic-PostNL). Taminiaux threw his arms in the air, convinced he’d won. Bittner had other ideas and had nipped past him at the line.
It was Bittner’s first win of the season and only the second of the year for a Picnic-PostNL team that badly needed one. Tobias Müller (Unibet Rose Rockets) was third, a fair reward for his team’s day of chasing. Lesson for the day: never celebrate until you’ve seen the photo finish.
The Bottom Line
Three races, three sprints, and a lot of riders learning that a few centimeters can be the difference between a win and a long ride home.
Guercilena Sets Out Vision for a Bolder, More Independent Giro d’Italia
Luca Guercilena, the former Lidl-Trek manager who has taken over as head of cycling at RCS Sport & Events, is charting a new course for the Giro d’Italia. Speaking to Corriere della Sera, he made clear his priority is building an identity for the Corsa Rosa that doesn’t live in the Tour de France’s shadow.
A central piece of his plan is earlier route reveals, giving teams and riders more lead time to plan their seasons around a race they can count on. He’s also weighing a shift in the Giro’s calendar slot, arguing that racing earlier could bring better weather, a bigger moment akin to how the Tour owns Bastille Day, and more separation from Belgium’s spring classics to draw a wider field of riders.
Route design is another focus: Guercilena wants stages balanced enough that climbers, sprinters and time trialists all have a fair shot, rather than a route skewed toward one type of rider.
Rather than chasing marquee names to fill the start list, Guercilena’s approach is to build a race compelling enough that top riders want to be there on their own.
Will it work? It depends what “working” means; the Giro will always stand in the Tour’s shadow. But cycling needs innovation — even the incremental kind. Good on Guercilena.
Radios or no Radios? Team Belgium Had a Solution
My answer to this perennial question? Keep the radios out of the national-team races. They haven’t been proven to enhance safety; they may actually make races less safe — and there’s a good chance we would have had less suspenseful races both Saturday and Sunday had the riders been connected via radios.
And besides: the rule elicits innovation, such as this solution by Team Belgium:
Of course, when Remco’s on a bad day, no amount of communication will matter…
TEAM AND RIDER NEWS
But…Where was Sepp?
Team USA placed three riders in the top eight at the Worlds road race — yet was without its arguably most celebrated current-era rider.
So where was Sepp? Presumably at home, recovering; once again this year, Kuss rode all three grand Tours. He didn’t win any of them, as he did the last time he completed the feat (Vuelta 2023), but simply finishing all three was nonetheless unique in 2026.
So Much for No Longer Glorifying Crashing…
Less than a month after suggesting that cycling should shake off its fascination with crashing (and recovering), I spotted this: Tadej Pogačar and friends, comparing collarbone-repair scars. It’s entertaining, but…sigh.
Thanks to Category Cafe for this video
PEZ VIDEO
Richard found himself in just the right place as Brandon McNulty crossed the finish line. Check it out here!
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