Miracle in Montreal: How USA teamwork won the Worlds for McNulty

After Tadej Pogačar, the flood. The absence of the defending champion ultimately served only to enhance the spectacle at the elite men’s road race at the World Championships in Montreal, where wave upon wave of attack washed over the finishing circuit around Mount Royal Park.

Pogačar’s unquestioned superiority has generally defined the shape of major races in recent years, and without him, this Worlds took on a freer form. The speed and day-long intensity were in keeping with the tone of cycling’s stratospheric 2020s, but the unpredictable finale was a throwback to the Worlds of yesteryear, when collective strategy seemed to count at least as much as individual strength.

And although Brandon McNulty won the rainbow bands with a stirring 33km solo effort, this was a victory that owed plenty to the collective endeavour of the United States team, most notably MVP Matteo Jorgenson and a typically pugnacious Quinn Simmons. 

We have become accustomed to the so-called ‘aliens’ of the peloton bending races to their wills through the sheer force of their watts, but here the victory eventually fell to a team that made ample use of their wits. 

Before the start, US coach Michael Creed had outlined a fundamental principle for his team on the finishing circuit. At all times, he wanted them to account for at least 10% of the front group. They did that and then some. When McNulty launched what proved to be the winning move with two and a half laps to go, there were three Americans in a front group of 15 riders.

No other squad could make the same boast after such an attritional race, but on a day as taxing as this, the best way to deploy those numbers was to go on the attack. With 33km to go, McNulty duly left a group he knew no team could possibly control. His instincts were sound. For the first time all afternoon, there was something of a lull, a moment of hesitation. With two laps to go, McNulty was suddenly a minute clear and closing in on the rainbow jersey.

McNulty’s attack came after all the main contenders had shown their hands in one way or another in an unwieldy race that couldn’t seem to decide on its final form. The only constant was ferocious intensity, starting with Bruno Armirail’s astonishing four laps of forcing when the race hit the finishing circuit in Montreal.

Armirail was riding under instructions to make the race as demanding as possible for French leader Paul Seixas, and for much of the afternoon, the 20-year-old’s ease on the Voie Camillien-Houde suggested he might become the youngest world champion in history. 

But Seixas was perhaps ultimately condemned by his own aggressive strategy. The distance, the speed, his youth, his feeding plan – or, more likely, a combination of all four – saw Seixas stricken by cramps on the final lap. After the lights went out, he rolled home in 15th place, delivering lacerating self-criticism in the mixed zone. His time will come, and soon, but that was no consolation on Sunday evening.

Still, Seixas’ Worlds was more impressive than Remco Evenepoel’s, even if the Belgian managed to salvage 12th place from a surprisingly subdued afternoon in Montreal. With Pogačar in the field, Evenepoel would have been the overwhelming favourite to take silver, but one wondered if, counterintuitively, the Slovenian’s absence would add tactical complications to his chances of claiming the rainbow bands. 

The hypothesis was never really tested, as Evenepoel already began to betray signs of suffering with 70km to go, when he was dropped for the first time. To his immense credit, he kept fighting his way back on and he even launched a defiant attack with a lap remaining, but he was running on pride rather than power by that point. 

Winner of the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal two weeks ago, Isaac del Toro was an obvious contender and the Mexican repeatedly showcased his strength on the Voie Camillien-Houde, giving the impression that the Worlds might become a duel with Seixas. 

Once his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate McNulty went up the road, however, Del Toro assumed a more defensive posture, but it would be wrong to suggest he was now simply hemmed in by cycling’s unwritten rules. In truth, Del Toro’s sharpness was also blunted by his repeated efforts with Seixas, and in the sprint behind McNulty, he would have to settle for fifth.

Before the race, Mathieu van der Poel insisted that the Montreal course was at the very limit of his capabilities, but he proceeded to stretch that theory by hurling himself on the attack with a shade under 100km to go. 

We should know by now, of course, that Van der Poel at the Worlds is akin to German football teams at World Cups of old. He should never be written off at this event, and he proved that again here by driving a dangerous break for almost 70km before being caught with two and a half laps to go. 

Day over? Not even close. Van der Poel simply began again, racing cannily through the finale and sprinting to third behind Michael Matthews (Australia). Like his bronze on the similarly demanding Zurich course two years ago, this was a medal won rather than an opportunity lost. 

Tom Pidcock might not feel the same way about his seventh place, even if the Briton can have few regrets about his approach. His challenge was complicated by a mid-race crash, but he calmly fought his way back on and he looked the sharpest of the favourites on the final two laps.

His fierce acceleration on the last time up the Voie Camillien-Houde almost changed the complexion of the race, bringing him to within 10 seconds of a seemingly flagging McNulty. But when he turned for help, none was forthcoming. Even a race of 273km can come down to a single moment, and this was where the rainbow definitively faded from sight for Pidcock and the rest. The title was McNulty’s.

Lance Armstrong is the nightmare from which American cycling has been trying to escape for more than a decade, and his long shadow falls on a corner of this day of triumph too. 

The last American to win the elite men’s road title was Armstrong 33 years ago, as his 1993 victory in Oslo was not among those excised from the record books when he was belatedly handed a lifetime ban for doping in 2012.

American cycling has struggled in the years since, despite occasional bright spots like Sepp Kuss’ 2023 Vuelta a España triumph. It remains to be seen if McNulty’s rainbow jersey will mark a turning point for the sport in the United States, but it was certainly a vindication for those who kept the flame alive during some dark times.

As a junior, McNulty raced with the Lux squad, managed by the former pro Roy Knickman, and his holistic approach played a key part in his development. McNulty was not short of suitors in Europe when he became junior time trial world champion in 2016, but on Knickman’s advice, he opted to bide his time and stay in the US, spending three seasons with Rally before belatedly joining the WorldTour in 2020 with UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

“That European hard-man, only-the-tough-survive approach doesn’t work for everyone,” Knickman told Velo at the time. “What if we make cycling palatable for Brandon? He can be around friends, he can let his body mature, and when he feels it’s time, he can go to Europe.”

McNulty’s rainbow jersey is a vindication of that patient philosophy, and it’s also a validation of the strategy of national coach Michael Creed, who had a long career on the American domestic scene after refusing to dope during his brief time at the top level with US Postal.  

The US men’s squad has rarely added up to the sum of its parts at this event, but their leading lights all arrived in Montreal in sparkling form. Creed found a way to coax his trio of potential winners into singing from the same hymn sheet. 

Simmons, whose default setting is to attack, tracked Van der Poel’s long-range effort. Jorgenson, so often deployed in a supporting role for Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert at Visma, was just as generous as a foil to McNulty here, delivering a masterclass in snuffing out danger. And McNulty’s gifts as a rouleur meant that he was never going to surrender a winning lead on the final lap, despite a mild wobble on the Voie Camillien-Houde.

McNulty claimed the rainbow bands, while Simmons improbably battled his way back to take fourth on the final dash to the line, and Jorgenson placed eighth even after responding to umpteen counterattacks. In the end, perhaps any one of them could have been world champion.

Their harmony was striking when one considers the nation’s history at this race. Greg LeMond became the first American medallist at the Worlds when he took silver in Goodwood in 1982, but only after he remorselessly hunted down his teammate Jonathan Boyer’s late attack, a move that essentially teed up Giuseppe Saronni’s immortal winning fucilata. 

LeMond and Boyer were just two individuals who happened to be wearing the same jersey. In Montreal, Simmons, Jorgenson and McNulty were a team. In a race as riotous as this one, that made all the difference.