{"id":3468,"date":"2022-09-16T15:43:12","date_gmt":"2022-09-16T13:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/uk\/?p=3468"},"modified":"2022-09-16T15:43:12","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T13:43:12","slug":"what-can-we-expect-from-the-uci-road-world-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/uk\/2022\/09\/16\/what-can-we-expect-from-the-uci-road-world-championships\/","title":{"rendered":"What Can We Expect From the UCI Road World Championships?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2022 UCI Road World Championships will kick off on September 18 at Wollongong, Australia, with a star-studded list of past and future champions. The question that has been plaguing me since I learned that two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Poga\u010dar will be racing in both the ITT and the road race is: can he win them both? Currently, he is favoured in neither of the two races, which is a surprise considering that, until he lost this year\u2019s Tour de France to Jonas Vingegaard (who will not race in Australia), everyone believed he was invincible, including Poga\u010dar. I think he has a good chance of winning both races. And I believe he thinks so too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s begin with the ITT, which will be run on Sunday over 34 km of fairly flat terrain, with riders asked to climb a 700-m hill, at 6.7%, twice \u2013 since the course itself is 17 km long and will be covered twice. To no one\u2019s surprise, the impressive Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a winner Remco Evenepoel<\/a> is widely considered the favourite for the time trial, based on his performance in the Vuelta ITT \u2013 in which he destroyed a relatively weak field, with second-place Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d 48 seconds behind. The Championship field, on the other hand, contains the best ITT riders in the world, such as two-time World Time Trial champion Filippo Ganna, two-time European time trial champion Stefan K\u00fcng and Poga\u010dar.<\/p>\n

Experts will look at Poga\u010dar\u2019s performances in the last two Tour de France ITTs, in which he finished eighth and third respectively, behind the winner in both races, Wout van Aert. But in 2021, Poga\u010dar had the yellow jersey all sewn up before the ITT and did not need to exert himself, and this year he had no chance of winning the Tour. And van Aert is not racing in the ITT; he is going for the road race victory. I prefer to look at the 2020 Tour ITT when the Slovenian was trailing Rogli\u010d before the stage and put in an unworldly performance to win the yellow jersey, taking the stage by 1 min 21 sec over Tom Dumoulin, with van Aert another 10 sec adrift.<\/p>\n

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Imagine being cheered on by the @BELCyclingTeam<\/a> \ud83d\ude33#rideofyourlife<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/poL69izvX2<\/a><\/p>\n

— Wollongong2022 (@wollongong2022) September 16, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n