“It’ll be a bit of a shitshow,” one team manager warned me beforehand.
At 10 a.m. on Wednesday, I found myself corralled with hundreds of the world’s best cyclists, waiting for the motos to roll us out.
It felt like a gran fondo with an extraordinary entry list. Wout van Aert, Remco Evenepoel, Mathieu van der Poel, Isaac del Toro, Demi Vollering, Kasia Niewiadoma, Lotte Kopecky: a who’s who of cycling, out there alongside juniors and under-23s, all waiting to get onto the same stretch of road.
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And, well, me.
It was recon day at the UCI Road World Championships in Montréal: a two-hour window on closed roads in which riders could scout the technical city circuit for the upcoming road races. For weeks, months even, they had been studying maps and elevation profiles. Now they could turn those diagrams into something they could see, feel and remember, provided they could find enough room.
I had joined a group of New Zealanders for the ride, rolling out from their downtown hotel towards the start line. Like everyone else at Worlds, their matching national jerseys suggested a uniformity. Their bikes and helmets, however, advertised the trade teams they call home for most of the season.
Worlds offers compatriots one of the few chances to become teammates. Today’s objective was learning the road. Learning how to work with the people wearing your jersey would have to happen in race meetings, on daily rides and during the downtime in between.
When the motos moved, we rolled away together. Riders chatted and laughed, and pulled phones from jersey pockets to collect something for social media later. Some junior men were getting air over speed bumps or showing off their wheelies. It had the crowded, sociable feel of a neutral rollout.
From the start line we descended for about 200 metres before heading straight into Camillien-Houde, the climb that could very well decide the outcome of these championships. It arrived too soon for the mass of riders to spread out, so we tackled it together.
About half a lap in, without warning, the unofficial neutral rollout ended. Up ahead, a little space had opened up, someone put some power through the pedals, and the pack began to stretch. Groups that had been riding socially were suddenly strung out in single file with riders testing their legs and picking lines at speed.
No one was calling out potholes or cracks anymore, yet Montréal’s streets were littered with them. And while I was grateful for my loaner bike, I was sorely wishing its tubed 25mm tyres were tubeless 30s instead.
Everyone seemed mindful – because nobody wants to ruin their chances of a medal on recon day – but we were still screaming downhill in a crowd that mixed the literal best cyclists in the world with 17-year-olds still learning to ride in the bunch.
That directeur sportif had had a point.
(Image credit: Anne-Marije Rook)
By lap two, the various purposes of the recon became apparent. Some riders, like Niamh Fisher-Black and Remco Evenepoel, were taking an easy look around. Others were putting in efforts or testing how a climb or corner felt at speed. On Camemillien-House the second time, Zoe Bäckstedt came zooming past me, fully in the zone. And I spotted Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney cutting the course to repeat a particular section. Still others tried to fit as many complete laps as possible into the limited time available.
Who they rode with varied, too. Van der Poel had his longtime training partner Freddy Ovett for company. Others rode with team managers or coaches – often zooming by on little vespas/scooters.
New Zealand junior Mia Collins had programme’s manager, Dan Gardner, a former professional cyclist to help guide her. With Collins on his wheel, Gardner showed her lines through corners, where to stay alert and where she would need to be near the front of the bunch come race day.
For riders who’d already pre-ridden the circuit, the closed roads offered a chance to check the details and to finalise decisions around gearing and tyre choices.
“This circuit is so short and technical with a couple of laps, you can pretty much get it in your head and you just need to memorize a couple key points,” said Fisher-Black, who won silver in last year’s event.
For her, today was meant to be an easy day, which was a good thing, too, because she didn’t think anything more could happen during recon.
“I’ll do a few laps today but it’s an easy training day for me,” Fisher-Black told me. “Anyone trying to do proper training today can give up.”
The championship’s defining circuit follows roads familiar to anyone who has raced or watched the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal. It measures just 13.4 km (8.3 miles), but packs in 269 metres (883 feet) of climbing per lap. Repetition is the problem: as Fisher-Black put it, the climb could be “cumulatively decisive”.
It never felt flat. We were either climbing, descending, negotiating bends or finding a way around road furniture. Technical and punchy, it makes for an attritional race at full speed, the kind where riders drop off lap after lap until only the strongest remain.
Of course, three laps around the course can only tell you so much. The preceding flat(ish) run-in, the repeated climbing, and all the tactics that can happen between efforts, leaves room for several outcomes. Fisher-Black cautioned against naming a definitive favourite for the course.
“So many different people can win here,” she said. “Every [move] is dangerous at Worlds.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
The end of the recon ride did not mean the end of the day’s obligations. Riders still had broadcast headshots to sit for. These are the faces that will appear on screen when the race gives the television director a reason to introduce them.
Then came the bike checks, particularly for the juniors and under-23s riders who’ll be first to tackle the course.
Junior gearing restrictions are no longer in effect, but there is still plenty for the UCI commissaires to inspect: frame and fork approval, the minimum weight of 6.8 kg, and those carefully optimised riding positions. Even the angle of the brake hoods has its own measuring gauge, checking that their inward tilt stays within 10 degrees of the handlebar drops.
For mass-start road racing, handlebars must measure at least 400 mm across their outside edges, including tape, with at least 280 mm between the innermost points of the brake hoods. Riders who had angled theirs a little too enthusiastically – and there were a few – were told to straighten them before racing or risk being disqualified.
With the photos and checks finished, it was back to the hotels for lunch, team meetings, stretching and whatever downtime remained.
The manager’s warning had been fair. But amid the jumble, hundreds of riders had been getting what they came for: a corner taken at speed, a pinch point committed to memory, a better sense of where they will need to be when the action heats up.
The elites still have a few days to refine their plans. But for the under-23 women and junior men, it’s an early bedtime and race day tomorrow. Both face ten laps of the circuit.
The women’s under-23 road race starts at 9 a.m. EDT on Thursday, September 24, followed by the junior men at 1:30 p.m. EDT.
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