Rivals accuse one another of “riding across national borders” during men’s world road race as Tom Pidcock and Michael Matthews blame lack of co-operation; Tributes paid to Katy Marchant after Olympic champion retires + more on the live blog
Polemica!
— Cillian Kelly (@cilliankelly.bsky.social) 27 September 2026 at 20:47
Cycling has moved on so much, that we no longer consider a 32km solo victory a particularly long range attack. This is what Pogacar has done to us, and the consequences we must live with.
Yesterday’s men’s road race looked at a certain point rather formulaic. A large early break comprising several semi-professional riders achieved an advantage exceeding eight minutes, then saw their lead almost single-handedly brought back by Bruno Armirail, working for Paul Seixas who clearly wanted a hard race. Mission accomplished.
Then attacks began, Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel were at the pointy end, with Briton Oscar Onley doing a sterling ride to follow in the wheels, along with Quinn Simmons, before Primoz Roglic rolled back the years to bridge to the front.
Gradually the numbers in the lead group started to erode as Van der Poel kept pushing on, but the lead group never had a lead exceeding a minute. Ben Healy bridged across on his own, before a dropped Wout van Aert started pulling the group behind to work for Remco Evenepoel, only for the double Olympic champion to lack the punch on the circuit’s key climb. Soon, the front group of favourites came together, and there was a stalemate until Brandon McNulty went clear and never looked back.
Well, he actually looked back a few times. His margin yo-yoed wildly in the final 20km between 1’10” and 10 seconds only for a lack of cooperation behind to enable him to hang on and take a famous victory. At least his UAE paymasters still have Pogacar’s jersey template to use.
Michael Matthews, bouncing back from a rough couple of years including a terrible training crash with a fire engine driver, won the sprint for silver whilst Van der Poel bested Simmons for the final spot on the podium.
But both Matthews and Tom Pidcock, who repeatedly attacked in vain to reel in McNulty, have noted that trade team connections seem to have influenced the finale, specifically Isaac del Toro’s lack of co-operation with the others in the group behind…
Pidcock, who also crashed earlier in the race and crossed the line with cuts on his leg, told Eurosport, “It was hard to make the difference, to get the gap with the wind the way it was, with the USA team and with Matteo, who was super strong once Brandon attacked, and obviously Isaac is on the same team as well.”
Matthews, in his post-race press conference, said, “There was a little bit of teamwork between certain riders, they were riding a little bit together.”
“If fewer teams had ridden together across national borders, then we would have caught him. It is what it is.”
Of course, riders riding for trade teammates is a long-running debate. In fact two British riders, Tom Southam and Charly Wegelius, were handed an effective lifetime ban from being selected for world championships after working for their Italian trade teammates.
Although that ban may have had more to do with their abandoning their own team leader, Roger Hammond, than choosing as appears to be Del Toro’s case, not chasing their own personal objective.
None of this detracts from McNulty and the USA team, who rode brilliantly all day shadowing and marking moves before the final deadly attack. It also means the USA have their first men’s world champion since Lance Armstrong in 1993. Yes, that win remains formally un-asterisked.
But there’s just enough gossip for a Monday morning, exactly how we like it…
"An inspiration to us all": Katy Marchant retires
Katy Marchant has announced her retirement from track cycling at the age of 33.
The sprinter became World and Olympic champion in the Team Sprint in 2024, alongside Sophie Capewell and Emma Finucane. She also became European Champion in the 500m Time Trial the same year.
Marchant first joined the GB team in 2013 after having once trained alongside Jessica Ennis as a heptathlete. After winning four national track titles in 2015, the following year Marchant made her Olympic debut in the sprint, winning bronze, her first elite international medal. The Yorkshire woman subsequently won bronze in the Commonwealth Games in 2018 before crashing out in the keirin at the delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
After giving birth to her first child, Marchant returned to racing in 2023, winning her first European medals and cementing her place in the team sprint line-up. With Capewell and Finucane, Marchant broke the world record in the event three times in Paris to claim GB’s first Olympic Gold in the team sprint.
She took time off after the birth of her second child in 2025, before once again returning to racing and winning silver in the Glasgow Commonwealth Games earlier this year. Announcing her retirement, British Cycling said Marchant had become, “a leader of the women’s sprint squad, playing a pivotal role in the recent success of the programme and inspiring the talent it now boasts.
> Katie Archibald announces retirement after glittering career marked by triumph and fortitude
“She was also the first women’s sprinter to return to the programme twice after having her two sons and is an impactful voice supporting and encouraging mothers in sport. ”
Marchant has also paid tribute to the organisation, saying “The highs, the lows, and everything in between – British Cycling has been my home. My dreams came true, and I feel incredibly lucky that it has been my life for the last 13 years. I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the most amazing people and have made friends for life.
“While I am closing the door on this incredible era, I am truly excited to embrace what’s next for me.”
Tributes have also been paid by teammates and rivals alike…
View this post on Instagram
“A chapter I’m so glad we got to do together ❤️ my biggest inspiration, brb crying now” Emma Finucane wrote.
“An inspiration to us all❤️what an incredible career👏” BMX World Champion Bethany Shriever said.
“Congratulations on an incredible career Katy!! Best of luck with your next chapter ❤️” Jazz Carlin wrote.
And Jessica Ennis-Hill wrote, “What a fantastic career Katy 💫”
Favourite side plot of the day
Faced with mounting injuries, Slovakia realised they needed to field at least one rider in the men’s road race or risk losing vital UCI points that could affect their ability to qualify riders for the Olympics. Their solution? Draft the massage bloke.
Vladimir Kovacik hadn’t raced in nine years and gave an excellent interview to TNT Sports when asked about his shape…
View this post on Instagram
And Kovacik impressively survived the opening 100km in the peloton looping around Montreal before bidding farewell once he reached the pits. An amazing ride, almost as great as his moustache…
View this post on Instagram
What left for Vollering?
Merckx, Roche, Van Vleuten, Pogacar. That’s the company Demi Vollering now keeps in the history books after becoming only the fifth rider to complete cycling’s ‘Triple Crown’, winning the Giro, Tour and World Championships in the same year.
With 38km remaining of the women’s road race, all seemed serene with Vollering solo-ing clear ahead of a small group, with teammate Puck Pieterse ably marking all and any attacks. Then with 15km to go, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and Elisa Longo Borghini bridged across. Longo Borghini, having twice finished third before in this race, attacked on the Camillien Houde climb but couldn’t follow Vollering’s counter-move.
With Niewiadoma’s cooperation, the pair continued to the finish line and held off Longo Borghini and the impressive diesel engine of Marlen Reusser to sprint for the title, where the Dutchwoman prevailed.
It means, for the first time ever in men’s or women’s racing, the exact composition and order of the world championships road race matched that of the final Tour de France podium. An excellent stat…
It also begs the question, for the Dutch climber, of what is left to tick off? By my count there’s the Olympic Games and a couple of cobbled classics and Milano-Sanremo if we’re applying the Pogacar-esque “completing cycling” lens to her career. Or she could keep trying to pile up the Grand Tours, which she’s podiumed twice a year since the pandemic. Nothing shabby about that…
Near Miss of the Day!
It’s back… did you miss it?
Help us to bring you the best cycling content
If you’ve enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £2.49. Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist, independent reviews, impartial buying advice and more. Your subscription will help us to do more.
1 Comments
Read more...
Read more...
Read more...
Latest Comments
@bikeclips When you see how narrow that cycle 'lane' is to begin with its ridiculous councils think they are satisfactory. But as the clip moves along, how many puddles, patches of debris etc has narrowed that path? And when you have a large vehicle inches away from you, where are you supposed to go? It also , in both clips, shows how other drivers can get by safely if you just have some patience. The driver of the Fiat at the start was waiting to pass for a while but they were safe and probably only held up for around a minute. Why do people feel so ready to take risky overtakes just to save literally minutes?
Advice letters are worthless junk designed to appease the gullible, as the offenders are fully aware that the police don't possess the the wit or the willingness to find out whether the driver has received a joke advice letter for the same offence in the past- and that's even within the same force. Imagine the vanishingly low probability that they would trouble to find out about offences in the jurisdiction of a different cyclist-hostile force, and refusing to look at the video unless the cyclist has been KSI'd is pretty hostile- wait till they catch onto the Lancashire technique of just binning everything that comes into OpSnap from cyclists! Kent has clearly been on the Lancashire Stagecoach course: ttps://upride.cc/incident/sk19evu_stagecoach42_closepass/ ttps://upride.cc/incident/px12dmy_stagecoach40_closepass/ ttps://upride.cc/incident/pk05opm_freelander_closepass/ The last one is the latest ignored routine Lancashire driver attack. These are minimum field of view videos- they would look even closer if I used wide angle like the OP
Am I the only one who is concerned that it looks like the pedal & shoe brands are making systems that tie you into buying a whole load of things that only work together and remove your ability to shop around or experiment with alternatives? This shoe / cleat system and also the new Shimano SPD-SLR look like you need to buy not only the pedals but only their products (so far) to work with them? And even if they get more third party support, I cant just swap one system out and try another like I can with SPD-SL , Look Keo and even Wahoo/Speedplay.
@bikeclips A slight correction, in the driver's imagination it relieves them of any obligation, under the Highway Code guidance that only applies to a completely segregated lane, the same instruction to leave 1.5 m applies whether the paint is there or not.
Fabulous race, really gripping once the necessary rather boring softening up 100 km or so was completed. A lot of the riders in the final chase group will look back, if they end their careers without a rainbow jersey, and think you know what, I really didn't play that right; no diminution of McNulty's achievement implied by saying that they could've caught him easily without the multiple sit ups. I don't understand why they couldn't have agreed to work together in equal turns until they caught him 10 km out, as they so easily could have done, and then played cat and mouse from there. Huge kudos to MVDP for achieving a bronze on a course which, as he said, was absolutely on the limit of what was possible for him. As they noted in commentary, no other race this week on that course was won by a rider weighing more than 70 kg so for a rider his size to be able to hang on over the climbs and still be able to contest the sprint was amazing.
@bikeclips Famously, these painted lanes have been shown to be more dangerous than no lane at all. If it doesn’t have bollards, it isn’t infrastructure
> If you’re ever at a bike show and Darimo are in attendance .... The German lightweight specialists are always coming up with something fun Darimo is a Spanish company. Just saying.
Another great example of how dangerous these token 'bike lanes' are. The magic white paint relieves the driver of any obligation to leave a safe distance.
You did well to get any result from Kent Police. I gave up after reporting a couple of incidents and not even getting a request to submit video evidence. They don't seem to care about roads policing. Well done for getting these 2 actioned.
@chrisonabike In the centre, the University of London for its effect on Bloomsbury, as Clive James said (from memory so forgive errors), Bloomsbury has been ravaged twice, once by the Luftwaffe and once by London University, but it was the university that had the worst impact.
1 thought on “Rivals accuse one another of “riding across national borders” during men’s world road race as Tom Pidcock and Michael Matthews blame lack of co-operation; Tributes paid to Katy Marchant after Olympic champion retires + more on the live blog”
Fabulous race, really gripping once the necessary rather boring softening up 100 km or so was completed. A lot of the riders in the final chase group will look back, if they end their careers without a rainbow jersey, and think you know what, I really didn’t play that right; no diminution of McNulty’s achievement implied by saying that they could’ve caught him easily without the multiple sit ups. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have agreed to work together in equal turns until they caught him 10 km out, as they so easily could have done, and then played cat and mouse from there. Huge kudos to MVDP for achieving a bronze on a course which, as he said, was absolutely on the limit of what was possible for him. As they noted in commentary, no other race this week on that course was won by a rider weighing more than 70 kg so for a rider his size to be able to hang on over the climbs and still be able to contest the sprint was amazing.