Worlds Week: Breaking Down the World Championship Road Race Course & Ranking the Contenders

Breaking down the courses and contenders for the looming Men's & Women's World Championship Road Races in Wollongong, Australia

Check out the latest Beyond the Peloton Podcast where I sit down with Choose the Hard Way Podcast host Andrew Vontz to discuss what to watch out for at this weekend’s World Road Race Championships.

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Men’s Road Race - 268 kilometers - Sunday, September 25th (Evening of Saturday, September 24th in North America)

The Men’s World Road Race Championship is taking place this coming Sunday (late Saturday night in the USA) in Wollongong, Australia. The confluence of an interesting course featuring one long climb early on with repeated jaunts up a short, but steep, pitch, with a collection of the world’s best riders shuffled somewhat randomly from their usual trade squads to their national teams has created an extremely interesting race. Nothing beats seeing top-tier stars who don’t necessarily get along, like Remco Evenepoel and Wout Van Aert, being forced to race as ‘teammates’ while they attempt to forge potential cross-nation alliances with their usual trade teammates, especially since these incredibly tenuous partnerships can crumble spectacularly at any moment (i.e. Alejandro Valverde working against his own Spanish teammate Joaquim Rodríguez to help his trade teammate Rui Costa win the race in 2013).

The Course

The course, which takes an early detour over the rainforest-covered mountains overlooking Wollongong before heading onto the main circuit down in town is just difficult enough to keep things interesting, but not so difficult as to limit the number of potential winners to high-mountain specialists. And with so much left up to desperate national teams instead of highly focused trade teams, expect much more wide-open and less controlled racing where riders have to take massive gambles on to whether sit in and hope things come back together or get out in front of the race via an attack.