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…
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…
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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…
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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?
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@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.
I worked in the TV industry for a few decades and I’m old enough to remember when Photoshop was considered the next great thing, but also the killer of creativity. And then there was Avid and Flame - which were going to destroy jobs and manipulate images. As a young person in the 90s I worked in Soho and moving images were still stored on tape. We would dub film and beta onto different formats for distribution. But then along came digital! And away went hundreds of jobs and creatives. Think back to 90s London and the thousands of cycle and motor bike couriers zipping around the streets. They are mostly gone - and it was digital that killed that industry. Suddenly no one needed a physical package delivered. It was sent by cable instead.
Ralph McTell must figure in there somewhere.
@jackcycles And making it much worse is when you import the reckless ideology of billionaires from overseas... My vote for who has wrought more misery on the streets of London than anyone in the history of UK politics is for Boudica, the Queen of the Iceni. Although those behind "Roads For Prosperity" might be up there, had that succeeded. (For the opposite I'll go with Sir Joseph William Bazalgette - I know he doesn't really qualify in the "politics" part though but it's not just socialists who appreciate a sewer) Anyone else any other ideas?
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.