The win marked the first road race world championship won by an American cyclist, male or female, since 1993, when Lance Armstrong won the title. It was also a reminder of the defending champion, Tadej Pogačar, who is McNulty’s leader at UAE Team Emirates–XRG. (Imagine, the world champion is Pogačar’s team domestique!) He was unable to defend his title because he is still recovering from injuries he sustained in the Vuelta a España.
The 28-year-old McNulty crossed the finish line 13 seconds ahead of another surprise, Australian Michael Matthews, who outsprinted Mathieu van der Poel of the Netherlands, the best finisher of all the pre-race favorites. But the day and the applause belonged to McNulty and his American teammates Matteo Jorgenson and Quinn Simmons.
Though the American team had come into the race saying they had a good chance to win, McNulty was still shocked by the result. “Honestly, I don’t know. Really this is, I don’t know—I’m really at a loss,” he stammered immediately after the race. “I made some jokes to my wife. I knew something could happen, but it would take a miracle, and I guess miracles happened.”
A winning attack as favorites fail to fire
McNulty made his winning move with 32km left to ride on the 273.4km course from Brossard to Montreal – which began with a flat section of 112km – when he broke away from a nine-rider group containing some of the favorites, including 20-year-old Paul Seixas of France, Mexico’s Isaac del Toro, Tom Pidcock of Britain and van der Poel. He made the break after a series of brief attacks in the group and as the riders were either taking a breather or simply underestimated the American.
It’s also possible that no one wanted to take the initiative in chasing for fear of helping others in the group win the race, a state of mind that would prove to be fatal. Whatever the reason, 29km from the finish McNulty’s lead had stretched to 33 seconds. With two of 12 laps of the 13.4km circuit left to ride, the lead had ballooned to 1:07.
One reason was Jorgenson, who raced after every break to become an anchor on the wheel. The Visma–Lease a Bike rider worked hard over the next 20km to make the pursuits as difficult as possible. But on the final climb of the Voie Camillien-Houde (1.7km @ 7.3%), McNulty cracked and the chasers, led by Pidcock and Italy’s Giulio Ciccone, came within 10 seconds of the American, who was now clearly struggling.
“The last climb up Mont Royal I was doing like zone 2, just dying, but I just kept pushing,” McNulty explained. But by the time he was on that uncategorized climb (780m @ 6%), his pursuers had stopped pursuing, afraid to sacrifice themselves for anyone else – so they all sacrificed themselves for McNulty.
But, according to Pidcock, there was something else at play. “Del Toro was obviously working for [his UAE Team Emirates–XRG teammate] McNulty in the end there,” he told Cyclingnews.
Because of the renewed cat-and-mouse game played by the chasers, McNulty was able to get away and then slow down near the finish and celebrate. “Until the last 100 meters, I really didn’t even believe it, I was so tired. I mean, I don’t know, I really don’t know,” the overwhelmed McNulty managed to say. “We’ve said for weeks now that we have a super strong team and it’s possible. I think we rode crazy well, marked everything, had guys ahead. I’m just seriously at a loss for words.”
Clearly.
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As for the favorites
Van der Poel exploded the race with one of his patented series of violent breaks 89km from the finish, which eventually created a 15-rider lead group that also included Belgium’s Wout van Aert, Primož Roglič of Slovenia, McNulty, Jorgenson and Simmons of the USA and Britain’s Oscar Onley. That group was later joined by Seixas, del Toro, Remco Evenepoel of Belgium and Ireland’s Ben Healy.
This series of breaks set in motion more than three hours of racing pandemonium too chaotic to describe, with new breaks forming new lead groups and other riders racing forward to join the battle. Van der Poel was at the front until he faded 25km from the line, and he made it onto the podium only because of the behavior of the chase group, which allowed him to rejoin it and win the bronze medal.
Van Aert couldn’t maintain the pace at the front and was dropped more than 60km from the finish. That enabled him to come to the aid of fellow Belgian Evenepoel, who appeared far from his best. According to TNT Sports, teammate Thibau Nys told journalists that the four-time time trial world champion was not feeling well. He made efforts to get to the front, but they were not sustained.
“It was tough actually from the first lap on,” Evenepoel said. “I felt I was not on a great day, so it’s pretty [bad] that it happened today. But I think there are no excuses; the strongest always wins on [the] Worlds, so that’s life.” He finished 12th, just 25 seconds behind McNulty.
“Kind of disappointed,” said van Aert, who finished 28th, 5:11 adrift. “Came here for more as a team, personally as well, but on the other hand there’s not much regret that I can have. The legs hurt really bad really early on, and I still tried to do an early move so I could get ahead of the race, which was good. But especially Mathieu [Van der Poel] was already super strong at that time. . . . and in the last laps I was just crawling to the finish.”
Seixas was very disappointed, especially because his team had ridden hard for him most of the day. This was particularly true of Bruno Armirail, who rode some 60km at the front and reduced the lead of what remained of a 16-rider breakaway by 8 minutes. But he either didn’t have the legs at the end or let the dithering of his fellow travelers keep him from contention. In the end, he stayed with the chase group until cramps forced him to slow down.
“It’s a huge disappointment,” Seixas said afterwards. “My teammates gave everything to help me get the best result, and it was a failure. Everything was going so well, my legs felt incredible, and honestly, I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a shame what I did today, cramping up like that. It was a childish mistake; I’ve never cramped up on a bike in my life.” He finished 15th, at 2:47.
To the victors go the last words
But I want this article about an astonishing race to have an upbeat ending, so the final words belong to the MVP of the winning team, Matteo Jorgenson: “I’ll accept that,” he said when he was asked if he could be called the team MVP. “I think Brandon was probably the MVP, but Quinn and I did an amazing race. Really, we made a plan last night. We set our egos aside a little bit and decided, ‘Okay, we just want an American to win this race.’”
He went on to say: “I really think that we played the perfect race, with Quinn able to follow that move with Wout and van der Poel to neutralize it. Then Brandon and I were able to take advantage of Seixas, Ayuso, and del Toro, who spent a bunch of energy. As soon as it all came back together, we could get one of us solo, which was the ultimate goal. From there, thankfully, I had crazy legs and I was able to follow a bunch of moves and make some guys a little bit frustrated, which really helped.”
And that’s how you win a world championship.
Results 2026 Elite Men’s Road Race World Championship: Brossard to Montreal (273 km)
| Pos. | Rider | Nation | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brandon McNulty | United States | 6:17:04 |
| 2 | Michael Matthews | Australia | +0:13 |
| 3 | Mathieu van der Poel | Netherlands | +0:13 |
| 4 | Quinn Simmons | United States | +0:13 |
| 5 | Isaac del Toro | Mexico | +0:14 |
| 6 | Mads Pedersen | Denmark | +0:14 |
| 7 | Tom Pidcock | Great Britain | +0:14 |
| 8 | Matteo Jorgenson | United States | +0:14 |
| 9 | Giulio Ciccone | Italy | +0:14 |
| 10 | Ben Healy | Ireland | +0:14 |