Red Bull has the numbers at the Worlds, but Del Toro's UAE connections may matter more

The German team will have the largest trade team presence in the elite men's road race at the 2026 UCI Road World Championships. Sixteen riders from Red Bull will represent their countries in Montréal, with Aleksandr Vlasov adding a 16th Red Bull rider as an Individual Neutral Athlete.

Lidl-Trek and EF Education-EasyPost each have 14 riders in the field; UAE Team Emirates-XRG has 13.

Those numbers could become particularly relevant on a course designed to thin the race out. The 273.7 kilometre route features 3,803 metres of climbing and finishes on the demanding Mount Royal circuit.

Tadej Pogačar will not defend his title, leaving a race without one dominant favourite and with more room for tactical uncertainty.

That also makes the network of trade team relationships across the national selections more interesting than usual.

At a World Championships, the jerseys change for a day, but the habits and loyalties built over a season do not simply vanish.

The 2024 Worlds in Zürich offered a striking example. Riding for France, Pavel Sivakov ended up alongside UAE teammate Tadej Pogačar after the Slovenian launched his long range attack, and helped drive the move.

A year later in Kigali, the picture was even more unusual. Juan Ayuso and Isaac Del Toro briefly joined Pogačar at the front, leaving three UAE riders from three different nations together in the leading group, where they worked together to keep the move going.

That does not mean trade team alliances suddenly become more important than national interests. But in the final of a World Championships, when national selections have been reduced to one or two riders, those relationships can become relevant.

That is where Red Bull's numbers become interesting, because several of its riders can realistically be expected to survive deep into the race.

Remco Evenepoel (Belgium), Primož Roglič (Slovenia) and Giulio Pellizzari (Italy) should all be capable of reaching the final, while Jai Hindley (Australia), Florian Lipowitz (Germany) and Finn Fisher-Black (New Zealand) could also still be present when the race begins to split.

UAE may have slightly fewer riders in absolute numbers, but its representation in the final could easily be just as strong.

Isaac Del Toro (Mexico), Brandon McNulty (United States) and Jhonatan Narváez (Ecuador) should all be considered serious candidates to reach the final. Jan Christen (Switzerland), João Almeida (Portugal) and Adam Yates (Great Britain) could do the same, depending on how the race develops.

Those relationships have already attracted attention in Montréal. Del Toro was pictured this week training with Mexican teammates, but also with UAE colleagues McNulty and Felix Großschartner, who will race for Austria.

There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. Riders stay in different hotels, smaller federations share logistical resources and Del Toro may simply have wanted stronger training partners.

Still, the images underline the peculiarity of a World Championships.

Del Toro will be one of the strongest riders in the race, but Mexico does not have the depth of Belgium, France or Italy. If he reaches the final without national teammates around him, some of the riders he knows best may be wearing different national jerseys.

But there are no guarantees. Belgium still carries the scars of the 2020 World Championships in Imola, when Primož Roglič did little to help chase Julian Alaphilippe despite having spent the season racing alongside Wout van Aert at Jumbo-Visma.

Tiesj Benoot brought up that example again this week in an interview with Het Nieuwsblad. "I know Primož a bit better now. I can't recall ever seeing him take the lead at the World Championships, not even for Pogačar. It’s in his DNA."

Another trade team with several riders who could remain relevant deep into the race is Lidl-Trek.

Juan Ayuso for Spain, Mads Pedersen for Denmark, Quinn Simmons for the United States and Giulio Ciccone for Italy could all feature late in the race. Mathias Vacek of the Czech Republic could also still be there.

As with UAE and Red Bull, that does not mean they will ride for one another. But it shows how many of the likely contenders could find familiar trade teammates around them once national teams begin to disappear from the race.

The same applies to some of the other favourites. Wout van Aert could potentially encounter Visma | Lease a Bike teammate Matteo Jorgenson of the United States or Davide Piganzoli of Italy late in the race. Paul Seixas may find himself alongside Decathlon CMA CGM teammate Felix Gall of Austria.

For Mathieu van der Poel, the picture is different. With only two Alpecin-Premier Tech teammates in the race, neither of whom would normally be expected to feature deep into the final, he is less likely to encounter familiar support late on. But Van der Poel is used to solving races for himself, and when he is at his best, that has rarely been much of a problem.