Storylines to watch at the Montreal 2026 World Championships, from Evenepoel to Vollering

Tadej Pogačar’s crash 32km outside Xeraco didn’t just alter the course of the Vuelta a España, it completely shifted the mood music around the World Championships. Before that fall, the elite men’s road race at the Montreal Worlds looked a formality. Whatever way you broke it down, Pogačar seemed destined to cruise to the rainbow jersey, just like he did in Zurich and Kigali.

In the absence of such a dominant reigning champion, there is suddenly potential for deviations from the set script, for surprises and perhaps even for outright anarchy. Logic says that Remco Evenepoel is now the favourite, but in some ways, his task might be complicated by Pogačar’s withdrawal. All eyes are now on the Belgian, who might also find himself hemmed in by the movements of his teammate Wout van Aert.

And impressive as Evenepoel has been this season, he doesn’t carry the same fear factor as Pogačar. From Mathieu van der Poel to Paul Seixas, from Isaac del Toro to Tom Pidcock, riders who might have privately settled for silver with Pogačar on show are now arriving in Canada with serious aspirations of claiming a rainbow jersey. Enric Mas seized the moment at the Vuelta, and another such opportunity presents itself at the Worlds.

According to Slovenia coach Uroš Murn, Pogačar will still make the trip to Canada to offer moral support to his teammates. His presence might also sharpen the focus of his rivals, reminding them that this might be the chance of a lifetime before normal service resumes next year. 

While Pogačar misses out on his shot at emulating Peter Sagan by winning a third straight world title, Demi Vollering can write her own piece of history by becoming only the second woman to complete the triple crown of Giro, Tour and Worlds after Annemiek van Vleuten achieved the feat in 2022.

Like Pogačar, Vollering has been the most outstanding all-terrains performer in the women’s peloton in recent years, but her brilliance has been flecked with vulnerability. She lost the 2024 Tour Femmes by just four seconds, while the star-studded Dutch squad has never added up to the sum of its parts on her watch. It seems an aberration that Vollering has just one silver medal to show from her six starts at the Worlds road race.

2026 has felt different from the very outset, when Vollering got off to a flying start at the Volta Valenciana and then followed up with victories at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the Tour of Flanders, Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

She produced a spectacular late raid to win the Giro just when it seemed the race has passed her by, and she found a way to win the Tour Femmes on the final week, recovering from a strategic error on Mont Ventoux. 

Vollering will travel to Canada with justifiable belief that, this year at least, she has the tools to solve any problem that arises.

The Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal doubled as a dress rehearsal for the Worlds, and two riders with a combined age of 41 fought out the spoils, with 21-year-old Isaac del Toro beating 19-year-old Paul Seixas to the line.

Under the rules in place up to 2024, both riders would have been eligible for the under-23 road race, despite placing third and fourth at the Tour de France in July. But in the cycling of 2026, age seems to count for little, and Del Toro and Seixas are both firmly among the top tier of contenders for the elite title.

In Kigali last year, after all, Del Toro was part of Pogačar’s winning move before finishing seventh, while Seixas took 13th. A week later, he would claim bronze at the European Championships.

This time out, both men will have genuine ambitions of landing the rainbow jersey and both will be heartened by their GP de Montréal outing. Del Toro had already raced – and won – the Deutschland Tour after his Tour podium, and perhaps that sharpness made the difference last Sunday. 

For Seixas, the Canadian WorldTour races marked his competitive return after his astonishing Tour debut, and his performance suggested he hasn’t taken his eye off the ball. Seixas, who turns 20 next week, has designs on becoming the youngest elite men’s world champion in history.

The theme of youth isn’t restricted to Seixas and Del Toro, incidentally, with Italy confirming that Lorenzo Finn will line out in the elite race rather than seek to defend his under-23 title. 

It’s eleven years since the World Championships were last held in North America and there should be plenty of North American interest at the business end of the elite races. Del Toro could be the first Mexican world champion, while Canada’s Magdeleine Vallieres is the defending champion in the elite women, and Michael Woods has come out of retirement to join Derek Gee-West in the men’s team. 

And, perhaps most intriguingly of all, the United States elite men line up with a team of considerable depth led by two on-form riders who will have genuine aspirations of a podium – or more – in the road race.

Brandon McNulty showcased his form by placing third at the GP de Montréal, while the American champion Quinn Simmons placed fourth there having taken fifth in Québec two days earlier. They are backed by a roster that includes Matteo Jorgenson, Kevin Vermaerke and Larry Warbasse. 

It’s potentially a heady moment for the United States, whose elite men have tended to underachieve at the Worlds. Take Greg LeMond and his two world titles and two silver medals out of the equation, and the United States has just one medal to show from the elite men’s road race at the Worlds – Lance Armstrong’s title in Oslo in 1993.

Armstrong’s later and since-rescinded successes created a bubble in American cycling that was lanced by his spectacular downfall. This current generation has been steadily gathering results of note, but this Pogačar-less Worlds presents the prospect of a historic breakthrough.

Second place at the Tour de France lifted considerable pressure from Remco Evenepoel’s shoulders after some uninspired stage racing displays in the opening months of his time at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, but the burden always returns quickly for riders of his calibre.

The Tour, which came after he eschewed any racing in May and June, confirmed once more that Evenepoel is most adept at locking in on a specific goal and hitting form at precisely the right moment. 

Once the Tour was out of the way, Evenepoel quickly confirmed that the Worlds was the next item on his to-do list, and the expectation was that he would be ready – and then some – for his Canadian expedition.

A fourth straight time trial title is seen almost as a formality, and Evenepoel surely would have spent August visualising a duel with Pogačar in the road race. With Pogačar now out of the equation, the road to a second road title after Wollongong is clear, but Evenepoel will also have to manage to weight of favouritism.

He coped just fine at the GP de Québec, underlining his form by winning in his first appearance since the Clásica de San Sebastián on August 1. Two days later, Evenepoel looked a touch sluggish in Montréal, but he was clear afterwards about his main goal. “Better a bad day today than in two weeks,” said Evenepoel. 

Already a double winner at the Paris 2024 Olympics, he is seeking to become the first man to achieve the same feat the elite Worlds after taking a gold and silver last year, just as Miguel Induráin and Abraham Olano had done in 1995.