2 hours ago
4
Remco Evenepoel etched his name into the history books with a dominant fourth successive men’s world time-trial victory in Montreal on Sunday.
The 2024 Olympic champion came into the race as the overwhelming favourite and he did not disappoint. Evenepoel was already more than 30 seconds ahead of the rest by the second intermediate time check, just over halfway along the 39.2km (24.4 mile) route.
By the time he reached the finish line, the 26-year-old Belgian had put almost a minute into second-placed Filippo Ganna of Italy, with the French rider Paul Seixas taking third another 15 seconds back. Evenepoel has not lost a time trial since the 2025 Tour de France.
Evenepoel becomes the first man to win the time trial world title four times in a row, while also equalling the record number of overall titles held by Germany’s Tony Martin and the Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara.
He has enjoyed his best season to date so far this year, winning the Amstel Gold Race, Clásica San Sebastián and Grand Prix de Québec, as well as finishing second behind Tadej Pogacar this year at the Tour de France.
Ganna started slowly and was only 10th at the first time check, but by the third he had moved up into second spot. But he could not make any headway into Evenepoel, who did not stop increasing his lead from the start to the finish.
The young Swedish rider Jakob Soderqvist, the under-23 champion in this discipline last year, was second to Evenepoel at the first two time checks but faded over the last 10km and finished fifth. The teenager Seixas gauged his effort better and put in a strong ride over the final 10km to finish third.
Earlier on Sunday, Marlen Reusser retained her world time-trial title as her expected main challenger, Demi Vollering, finished a disappointing eighth.
Reusser secured an ultimately comfortable victory in Montreal, winning her second world championship after triumphing last year in Kigali – but not before the young British rider Zoe Backstedt gave her a scare.
Backstedt had been quickest at the first two intermediate time checks on the course but Reusser powered away in the second half of the race to beat the 21-year-old by 40sec. Germany’s Franziska Koch finished third, a further 6sec back.
“It’s a good present,” said Reusser, who was competing on her 35th birthday. “I also thought, win or not, I have something to celebrate.
“From the side of pacing and understanding how fast you should go and how you should also cope with these challenges on the way, I was really nervous. I was not really sure, because we don’t have time trials like this often … I’m used to doing 20km.”
Reusser has been virtually unbeatable in races against the clock in the past few years. The Swiss cyclist is a four-time European champion and has won time-trial stages at the Tour de France Femmes and Giro d’Italia Women.
Backstedt had been a junior and twice under-23 world champion in the discipline, but this race was around 12km further than any previous time trial in which she had competed. Koch’s bronze medal continued a dream season for the German, who won Paris-Roubaix in April. Vollering, the European road race champion, was never in the running for a medal.
Elsewhere, Mathieu van der Poel warmed up for his bid for a second world road rice title with a long-range solo break on the final stage of the Tour of Luxembourg .
The Dutch star broke clear just over a couple of kilometres into the 177km stage and held on in front all day to win by more than a minute. Van der Poel’s run is thought to be one of the longest solo breaks in the history of cycling.
The 2023 world road race champion will be one of the favourites in Montreal next weekend, where the reigning champion Pogacar will be missing because of injury.
“That was not the plan before the start, but I found myself alone from the start of the race in fact, and I just rode my tempo the whole day,” Van der Poel said. Italy’s Davide Piganzoli finished fourth on the stage to secure overall victory.
