{"id":202954,"date":"2025-09-30T08:37:47","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T08:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=202954"},"modified":"2025-09-30T11:00:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T11:00:19","slug":"some-takeaways-from-the-remarkable-2025-road-race-world-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/09\/30\/some-takeaways-from-the-remarkable-2025-road-race-world-championships\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Takeaways from the Remarkable 2025 Road Race World Championships"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2025 UCI Road Race World Championships, which ended Sunday with the Elite Men\u2019s race, were remarkable not only because they were the first to be held on the African continent \u2013 though that was surely special.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Anyone who saw that spectacle on Sunday, with tens of thousands of people cheering on the exhausted riders as they climbed Mont Kigali, must surely have been delighted and moved. A sporting event that can bring such joy to the population of people living in a troubled country has a value that transcends mere entertainment. And numerous riders told journalists that the drumming that accompanied the start of the time trials made it the best start to any race they had ever experienced. It was a definite win-win.<\/p>\n

Yes, it wasn\u2019t perfect. There was pollution and heat and humidity that affected riders on some of the toughest courses they had ever ridden, and a number of riders fell ill with a stomach bug late in the event. On the other hand, there were surprisingly few serious crashes, and the crowds were demonstrative but brilliantly self-controlled; there was none of the running along with the riders you see in European races that always seem to lead to imminent tragedy, but somehow never do. The Rwandans understood what Europeans don\u2019t seem to get: cycling is not an interactive sport.<\/p>\n

Riders who caught our eye<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Sure, Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a> and Remco Evenepoel were the big draws of the event and they lived up to the hype, as they always do. After being humbled by Evenepoel in the ITT, Poga\u010dar again demonstrated, in Sunday\u2019s brutal road race, that he is one of the greatest, if not the<\/em> greatest, riders of all time. It\u2019s not just his dominance that impresses, but also the elegance of his riding style; even when he\u2019s suffering, hemakes your jaw drop to the floor.<\/p>\n

As for Evenepoel, he won gold and silver and might have given Poga\u010dar a run for his money if he hadn\u2019t been forced to make two bike changes due to problems with his saddle. The way he rode after correcting the issue leads me to believe that Poga\u010dar might have been fortunate to win. But you never know.<\/p>\n

My favourite rider in these World Championships was the 18-year-old Slovak Vikt\u00f3ria Chlado\u0148ov\u00e1. After finishing second to the dominant Zoe B\u00e4ckstedt in Monday\u2019s U23 ITT world championship, the youngest rider in the women\u2019s U23 races came back three days later race to win another silver medal in Thursday\u2019s U23 road race, finally running out of gas at the end of the race as the winner, another impressive teenager, 19-year-old C\u00e9lia Gery of France, rode past her. Chlado\u0148ov\u00e1 lost by a scant 2 seconds. For me, she was the rider of the event because, hey, Remco and Pogi had a week\u2019s rest between their two races and the Elite Women had six days. I\u2019m going to repeat what I wrote at the time: Boy, am I looking forward to seeing Chlado\u0148ov\u00e1 ride on the WorldTour.<\/p>\n

\"Kigali<\/a>
Vikt\u00f3ria Chlado\u0148ov\u00e1, the youngest rider in the women\u2019s U23 races won another silver medal in the U23 road race. \u00a9 Profimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But, hey, silly me; I should have checked. She is already riding on the WorldTour, and for Visma\u2013Lease a Bike, with the likes of Marianne Voss and Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot.<\/a> She won the Slovak national ITT and road race championships earlier in the year and rode in both the Giro d\u2019Italia Women and the Vuelta Espa\u00f1a Femenina, no doubt as a domestique. She will be a star. The same goes for Gery, who rides for FDJ-Suez and won three stages and the green jersey at this year\u2019s Tour de l\u2019Avenir Femmes.<\/p>\n

A big shout-out to another 18-year-old, Tsige Kiros of Ethiopia, who had the best performance at the event of any African rider not named\u00a0Kim Le Court-Pienaar by finishing seventh in the Women\u2019s Junior Road Race, only 3 seconds behind the winner, Paula Ostiz of Spain. Kiros might have won the race but for a mechanical issue, which forced her to expend energy in making up the gap to the peloton, and because of her aggressive attacking style, which also took a toll. But she rode hard and came close at the end. She is currently an apprentice rider, but some team will \u2013 or should \u2013 sign her before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Yet another 18-year-old, Harry Hudson of Britain, had an eye-popping performance in Kigali. He took off on the spur of the moment with 36 km left to ride in the Junior Men\u2019s Road Race and was never really challenged, winning by 16 seconds over his two closest pursuers. Hudson is the first British rider to win the race and is also the British junior national hill-climb champion, in which he reportedly also beat the adult men. He has been announced as a Lidl-Trek Future Racing rider for next year. Hudson will have current Poga\u010dar teammate Juan Ayuso as a teammate next year, as the Spaniard signed a five-year contract with the team last week.<\/p>\n

The course<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The road race course, especially for the Elite Men and Women, but also in general, was too hard for most African riders and most riders from second-tier cycling nations. In combination with the heat and humidity, it was downright brutal. Tom Pidcock called it \u201cthe most unenjoyable race of the year,\u201d and an astonishing 135 of 165 riders in the Elite Men\u2019s road race did not make it to the finish line \u2013 that\u2019s 82%! In addition, most of the laps of the road races were uneventful because riders were saving their legs for the end of the race, or at least the final two or three laps \u2013 except, of course, Poga\u010dar and the Pogi-like Harry Hudson.<\/p>\n

Having said all that, those final few laps were dynamite; most of the finishes were breath-taking and suspenseful and almost always the best rider won \u2013 or, in the case of Elite Women\u2019s Road Race winner Magdeleine Vallieres, the best and the brightest. Having the unyielding C\u00f4te de Kimihurura and its bone-rattling cobblestones very close to the finish line of the races was genius. It was the final test of a testing championship and often had us on the edge of our seats. The event was a watershed in more ways than one, and I had a great time watching it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2025 UCI Road Race World Championships, which ended Sunday with the Elite Men\u2019s race, were remarkable not only because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":202956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[329],"tags":[8504,8699,8678,3415,8694,6079],"global-categories":[3366],"class_list":["post-202954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-road-cycling","tag-2025-uci-road-world-championships-rwanda","tag-2025-uci-world-championships","tag-kigali-2025","tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-viktoria-chladonova","tag-zoe-backstedt","global-categories-cycling"],"yoast_head":"\nSome Takeaways from the Remarkable 2025 Road Race World Championships - \u0160koda We Love Cycling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The 2025 UCI Road Race World Championships, which ended Sunday with the Elite Men\u2019s race, were remarkable not only because they were the first to be held\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/09\/30\/some-takeaways-from-the-remarkable-2025-road-race-world-championships\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Some Takeaways from the Remarkable 2025 Road Race World Championships\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The 2025 UCI Road Race World Championships, which ended Sunday with the Elite Men\u2019s race, were remarkable not only because they were the first to be held\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/09\/30\/some-takeaways-from-the-remarkable-2025-road-race-world-championships\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"\u0160koda We Love Cycling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-09-30T08:37:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-09-30T11:00:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net\/2\/2025\/09\/Kigali-Championships-profimedia-1041445997-CVR.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"990\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"660\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tereza\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Siegfried Mortkowitz\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/09\/30\/some-takeaways-from-the-remarkable-2025-road-race-world-championships\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/09\/30\/some-takeaways-from-the-remarkable-2025-road-race-world-championships\/\",\"name\":\"Some Takeaways from the Remarkable 2025 Road Race World Championships - 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