Five Key Takeaways: World Road Race Championships
Breaking down how a hard World Road Race Championships between historically great rivals was won
Programming Note: The BTP newsletter will be on holiday between today’s post and the Vuelta a España Pre-Race Cheat Sheet, which will come on August 25th before the start of the final (and best) grand tour of the season on Saturday, August 26th, where premium subscribers will receive daily race analysis.
This Sunday, after hours of all-out racing in the streets of Glasgow, Scotland, Mathieu van der Poel soloed his first career Elite Men’s Road Race World Title. He accomplished this by attacking and dropping an elite front group of Mads Pedersen, Tadej Pogačar, and Wout van Aert on an absurdly technical 50-corner 14-kilometer-long city circuit. Not even a crash from Van der Poel, after he slid out in the wet downhill corner with 17 kilometers remaining, could derail the dream ride. The Dutch superstar crossed the finish line 1’37 ahead of Van Aert, who came in a few seconds ahead of Pogačar.
Despite the 270-kilometer-long course, particularly its 140-kilometer-long circuit in the Glasgow city center course, looking benign on paper and drawing criticism for its lack of natural beauty and resemblance to a criterium course, the race produced one of the most all-out displays of racing seen in modern cycling, with elite fitness, technical skill, and tactical nuance required to make the winning group. The day was so demanding that by the end of it, the reigning World Champion, Remco Evenepoel, who rode clear for a solo victory with his raw strength to win last year’s World title, was dropped due to his lack of technical ability, and the gaps were some of the largest ever at a road World Championships between the top few finishing positions.
2023 World Road Race Championships Top Five
1) Mathieu van der Poel (The Netherlands) +0
2) Wout van Aert (Belgium) +1’37
3) Tadej Pogačar (Slovenia) +1’45
4) Mads Pedersen (Denmark) +1’45
5) Stefan Küng (Switzerland) +3’48
To expand on yesterday’s premium subscribers-only post-race breakdown, I’ve broken down the key moments and takeaways from the race below:
2023 World RR Championships Race Notebook:
140km-to-go: As they enter the Glasgow city circuit, the Danish team is driving an extremely hard pace at the front, which has already strung out the field into a long, single-file line. This is normally something you would expect to see in a 70-minute criterium, not in the middle of a six-hour-long road race.
116.5km: Within a few minutes of racing on the extremely technical circuit, the peloton is already breaking up, with the race’s strongest riders, Mads Pedersen, Tadej Pogačar, Wout van Aert, and Mathieu van der Poel, in the front group. Notice how Van Aert is already pulling through at the front, despite it only thinning the group and eliminating his Belgian team’s numerical advantage, while Van der Poel is sitting, somewhat comfortably, in the pack.
112.7km: To control the race and keep moves from getting off the front, Van Aert’s Belgian team gets to the front and sets a hard and steady tempo. However, this hard tempo keeps their co-leader and defending champion, Remco Evenepoel, stuck out of position and too far down the peloton. Evenepoel’s weaker technical skill shows.
97.5km: Due to lacking the ability to ‘float’ towards the front like Van Aert and Van der Poel, Evenepoel realizes his only way of surviving the circuit is to force a small move off the front. He attacks, and while it looks for a moment like he is attempting an extremely long-range solo move, similar to how he won Worlds in 2022, he soon sits up slightly and looks back, which is a sign that he wants others to bridge up to him.
90.9km: Evenepoel’s attempt to force a split doesn’t work, and he is soon shuffled back and stuck in a second group on the road as the race weaves through its endless corners. Van der Poel, sensing an opportunity to split up the Belgian team and isolate Van Aert for a 1v1 battle, attacks up the steepest hill on the course in order to force a small group clear and keep Evenepoel and his Belgian teammates stuck in the chase group.
72.7km: This tactic eventually succeeds, and Van der Poel likely can’t believe his luck when Van Aert starts pulling through to distance his own group of teammates stuck behind. Presumably, Van Aert thinks that if he can get ahead of Evenepoel, his path to victory is far more straightforward. However, this neutralizes his team strength, one of the biggest advantages he has over Van der Poel. Even if he doesn’t want Evenepoel in the move, he is doing unnecessary work and throwing away a free card to sit on, and forcing others to pace. Also, without France represented here, the likelihood they can hold off the chase group is slim.
65.9km: The chase group, led by France, eventually reels in the Van Aert group. Belgium immediately returns to the front to set a hard pace while Van der Poel moves back to rest in the slipstream.
64km: Belgium’s extremely hard pace through the technical course eventually drops Evenepoel, who is forced to spend massive amounts of energy chasing back on after being gapped in every corner.
61km: The pace at the front slows, and as soon as Evenepoel returns to the front, he starts attacking, once again falling into the ‘off the front or off the back’ trap. As soon as he is reeled in by Pogačar, Van Aert attacks, attempting to set up the same ‘attack, counter-attack, attack again’ dynamic that cracked Pogačar on stage 11 of the 2022 Tour de France. However, unlike that situation, they are allowing other favorites, like Van der Poel, to sit in while they tire both Pogačar and themselves out with the attacks.
40.1km: With Alberto Bettiol dangling 30 seconds off the front, Van Aert gets clear and starts driving away from the chase group with an elite sub-group. However, this chase group comprises all the favorites, Van der Poel, Van Aert, Pogačar, and Pedersen, which means Van Aert is simply driving away from his team and isolating himself against his top rivals.
29.9km: At one point, Van Aert is digging deep to set an extremely hard pace, but not attacking to ride clear in a solo move, to reel in Bettiol while three Belgian teammates, including Evenepoel, chase hard 45 seconds behind, with Van der Poel in his wheel. Even taking into account that he wants to be as far ahead of Evenepoel as possible, this seems ill-advised, and contributes to his fatigue later in the race.
22.3km: Just as they catch a fading Bettiol on one of the steepest pitches on the course, Van der Poel smartly attacks extremely hard, which allows him to use the slowing Bettiol as a sort of screen to slow the reaction from the others. But, within seconds, we can see that Van der Poel is simply stronger than the other three riders and will be almost impossible for them to reel in.
16.6km: With a healthy 34-second lead, Van der Poel slides out and crashes in a wet downhill corner. Typically, this would be the end of a successful move due to potential injury to the rider and/or equipment.
16.5km: However, impressively, Van der Poel is back up and on his bike just six seconds after his fall, and back up to full speed just seven seconds later.
16.4km: 16 seconds after Van der Poel remounts and just 10 seconds after he is back up to race speed, the Van Aert-led chase group rides through the same corner. But, without race radios, they likely have no idea that Van der Poel has crashed, and now has a broken shoe, and that they could have a realistic chance of catching him if they work together right here.
Finish: Despite the broken shoe and a torn jersey/shorts, Van der Poel easily holds off the chasers to cross the finish line for his first career elite World road race title.
Chase group finish: Showing why the chase group had so much trouble working together, Van Aert gets second place after riding clear of the others heading into the finish, while Pogačar impressively outsprints Pedersen for third place. This means we get the same top three as we had earlier this year at the Tour of Flanders (just in a different order), and it highlights just how good these top three riders are across nearly every type of terrain.
Five Key Takeaways
The first three takeaways are my initial post-race thoughts sent to premium subscribers on Sunday after the race.
1) Mathieu van der Poel completes his transformation from careless talent to polished champion
The 28-year-old superstar bounced back from a lackluster Tour de France and potentially even showed that was part of a larger plan by executing a tactically perfect race to win his first career World road title.
Outside of netting him a World Championship, the win means Van der Poel now has two World Titles (CX & Road) and two Monument victories (along with runner-up finishes at E3 and Flanders) in a single season. This is an incredible haul for a career, let alone a season, and puts Van der Poel into ‘rider of the year’ conversations.'
The win shows how Van der Poel has drastically evolved from a rider who raced without forethought and complete abandon to someone who has gained a surprising amount of tactical nuance in his one-day riding. Instead of launching from absurd distances, he now targets an exact point on the course where he wants to launch his race-winning move and works everything backward from there.
While he still launches ill-advised mid-race attacks here and there, he has added a slightly more subdued strategy to his game, and has won three of the biggest one-day races of the year by sitting back and letting others do the work for him, before launching a knock-out attack.
For example, the Belgian team controlled the race for long stretches of today’s race and even spent significant energy 1-2 attacking Pogačar with Remco Evenepoel and Van Aert. At the same time, Van der Poel sat back and allowed Pogačar and Van Aert to wear themselves out before launching a brutal attack on one of the seemingly countless short, punchy climbs that suited his abilities so well.
2) The Belgian duel strategy of Wout Van Aert & Remco Evenepoel fell to pieces late in the race
Wout van Aert and Remco Evenepoel, the two cornerstones of the incredibly strong Belgian team, had disappointing days as their aggressive two-pronged strategy fell apart after Evenepoel was dropped from the lead group.
Wout Van Aert: Van der Poel’s long-life rival added yet another frustrating second-place finish at a World Championship-level road event.
Out of six total podium finishes at Worlds, European, and Olympic road championship events, he now has five 2nd places and one 3rd place.
This adds to his disappointing 2023, where he has failed to win at every major target (Milano-Sanremo, Paris-Roubaix, Tour of Flanders, Tour de France) and only has a single victory, E3, to show for his supreme talent and fitness.
However, while many fans and the Belgian media will portray these runner-up finishes as a complete failure, today’s result was likely the result of Van der Poel simply being stronger than Van Aert on the day.
The only decisions we can look back on from today is Van Aert being so willing to work when clear with a small group ahead of the reduced peloton and taking it upon himself, along with Evenepoel, to attack and counter-attack Pogačar, while Van der Poel sat in the group.
Had he been more judicious with his energy, perhaps he would have had a chance to respond to Van der Poel’s winning move.
Remco Evenepoel: The reigning World Champion finished over 10 minutes in arrears of Van der Poel after being dropped with 35 kilometers remaining.
Defending his title was always going to be a tough task for Evenepoel, who is attempting to stretch his peak form for the six-week period between Worlds and the end of the upcoming Vuelta a España, but a lack of technical skills, not form, appeared to be the main issue for Evenepoel at today’s race.
Unable to ‘float’ inside the top ten positions at the front, which is critical on a 50-turn city circuit, Evenepoel was forced to sit at the back, which takes a massive toll due to having to sprint out of every corner to get back on terms with the riders in the front of the group, who are able to go through the turns at a much much easier, and smoother, pace.
Due to the inability to sit at the front, the 23-year-old was constantly yo-yo-ing between sitting at the back and attacking off the front. A rider might be able to get away with this on a smoother or less technical circuit, but over 140 kilometers of racing on a circuit as tricky as today’s, even a rider as talented as Evenepoel will eventually be caught out due to the massive energy expenditure required by this style.
One does have to wonder how Evenepoel’s detour from Vuelta prep to defend his World Title will affect his chances at the upcoming Vuelta against top-tier GC riders who have had much smoother build-ups.
3) Tadej Pogačar’s third-place finish on a course that didn’t particularly suit him cements his status as the world’s most versatile rider
Despite coming off a disappointing and difficult Tour de France, Pogačar rolled up to a race that didn’t particularly suit him and bagged a hugely impressive third-place medal.
Coming into the day, Pogačar’s chances of winning against much more powerful riders like Van Aert and Van der Poel were almost zero on a circuit that was essentially a city-center criterium and didn't feature a single climb longer than a minute.
However, these slim chances didn’t let Pogačar stop him from trying, and his ride to grab a medal here shows incredible physical talent as well as cements his position as a true ‘racer’s racer’ that is always game to throw down, even when courses and conditions don’t suit him.
Keep in mind that Van der Poel and Van Aert might have been able to best Pogačar on today’s circuit, which was almost purpose-built for their talents, but they can’t come close to even challenging Pogačar on his stage-racing terrain.
While Van der Poel might currently be in pole position for ‘rider of the year’, if Pogačar can rally to win Il Lombardia at the end of the season, he would almost certainly have to be celebrated as 2023’s best rider, since this would leave him with a 100% win rate at one-week stages races (2/2), four major one-day wins, including two monuments, a runner-up at the Tour de France and medal at the World Road Race Championships during a single season.
4) Mads Pedersen may have missed out on the podium, but his Danish team’s tactics successfully maximized his chances of winning the race
The Dane might have narrowly missed out on the podium, but Pedersen put in one of the most impressive rides on the day to make the winning move after having his Danish team set an initial hard pace on the circuit, knowing that the harder the race was, the better chance he had of being in a position to win.
Unfortunately, he ran up against three other riders who benefited from the same dynamic, but 4th is still an impressive result when going up against some of the biggest all-around talents in the history of the sport.
Also, a consolation for Pedersen is that it is difficult to imagine how he or his team could have created a situation that produced a higher probability of a Pedersen victory, and he was only a close sprint away from finishing on the podium.
5) The Glasgow circuit produced some of the hardest line-to-line racing ever seen in a race of this distance
The ten laps of the 14-kilometer Glasgow circuit produced some of the hardest, and most exciting, line-to-line racing I’ve ever seen in a 270-kilometer-long race.
The fact that on a circuit that didn’t feature a sustained climb longer than a minute, the margin between 1st and 20th place was more than eight minutes, which is far larger than the mountainous Austrian course from 2018, should serve as yet another reminder that city circuit courses are nearly always far harder than expected when initially looking at the profile.
City circuits produce harder-than-expected racing simply due to the fact that they create a dynamic where everyone is sprinting into and out of corners every few seconds…for hours on end.
But, outside of that, Sunday’s race was so difficult because it suited the favorites.
Pedersen, Pogačar, Van Aert, and Van der Poel knew that a hard, strung-out race was good for them since it would allow them to use their superior bike-handling skills to ‘float’ near the front, while strong, but less technically proficient riders, like Evenepoel, would be stuck further down the bunch, and eventually dropped, due to this pace.
In short, a hard pace eliminated variables between these riders and a potential win.