{"id":193680,"date":"2023-08-14T09:38:31","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T09:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=193680"},"modified":"2023-08-14T09:38:31","modified_gmt":"2023-08-14T09:38:31","slug":"ups-and-downs-at-the-uci-cycling-world-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2023\/08\/14\/ups-and-downs-at-the-uci-cycling-world-championships\/","title":{"rendered":"Ups and Downs at the UCI Cycling World Championships"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think it\u2019s fair to say that Mathieu van der Poel came out of the UCI World Championships with mixed feelings. There was the brilliant success in the Elite Men\u2019s Road Race on August 2 in which he overcame a late crash to take an impressive victory, well ahead of Wout van Aert and Tadej Poga\u010dar. Ten days later, there was his disastrous crash, just 3 minutes into the race, on the opening loop of the Mountain Bike Cross-country Olympics race, from which he could not recover.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cI’m not feeling very well at the moment,\u201d the Dutch all-rounder told NOS<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cI fell on the same side as I fell on the road race. My front wheel slipped on a relatively easy part of the track. It’s my own fault. I can’t say much about it either, other than being angry with myself. It’s just a shame that I had such a nice period on the bike end so stupidly.\u201d<\/p>\n

It could be that the very difficult and taxing road race ten days earlier had taken some sharpness out of him. It certainly had that effect on van Aert and Poga\u010dar. The Belgian did not look his usual rapid self nine days after the road race when he finished fifth in the ITT, 1:37.23 behind winner Remco Evenepoel, while the Slovenian two-time Tour de France winner finished a distant 21st, at 3:05.88. \u201cI cannot be satisfied with the result today,\u201d Poga\u010dar told Eurosport. \u201cbut on Sunday, I left it all on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

Filippo Ganna finished second in the ITT, 12.28 adrift, with the 19-year-old Welshman Joshua Tarling coming in third, at 48.20. Evenepoel won the ITT despite his participation in the road race but he realized at one point in that event that the route, with its many twists and turns, did not suit him and wisely took the foot off the gas, to save himself for the time trial. He finished a distant 25th, 10:10 behind van der Poel. Many riders did not like that course, particularly the second part of the race, which was run through the centre of Glasgow. But it turned out to be extremely selective and gave us a podium that had the three best riders in the world. The women rode the same Glasgow route, though only six laps of that 14.3-km section, compared to the 11 laps the men had to ride.<\/p>\n

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Completed it \u2705<\/p>\n

Over 200 Rainbow Jersey's Awarded.
Over 11 Incredible Days.
Simply Incredible.#GlasgowScotland2023<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/WUkXr6kFD0<\/a><\/p>\n

— 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships (@CyclingWorlds) August 13, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n