Stars to watch at the 2024 UCI Road World Championships in Zurich
From 21-29 September, Zurich will see an ultra-competitive World Championship competition with Olympic and world champions returning to the international stage to fight for yet another title.
Cycling Road
The best road cyclists in the world hardly had time to celebrate their Olympic accomplishments from Paris 2024 before turning their attention to the next major challenge - the 2024 UCI Road World Championships in Zurich, Switzerland.
The competition pool is an ultra-competitive one, with defending champions looking to extend their reign, while recent Olympic champions look to add a world title to their 2024 resumes.
From 21 - 29 September, five elite world titles will be up for grabs: the men’s and women’s individual time trials, men’s and women’s road races and the mixed team relay time trial.
The Swiss courses will pose unprecedented challenges to the riders, with up to 4,400m of altitude gain set to test the athletes throughout some of the races, making for what is gearing up to be an incredible competition.
Here are five stars to watch in Zurich at the 2024 UCI Road World Championships.
Remco Evenepoel of Team Belgium races in the Men's Road Race at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at trocadero on August 03, 2024.
Remco Evenepoel
Coming in as the one to beat in the men’s road race and time trial is Belgium’s double Olympic champion, Remco Evenepoel, who took the Olympic crown in both events at Paris 2024.
Boasting more than just the two Olympic golds, Evenepoel is also the defending time trial world champion. He also finished in third place at the 2024 Tour de France, a feat that could prove advantageous over the 4,400m of altitude gain that he will face throughout the race.
Though the 24-year-old cyclist’s skill and recent accolades prove that he is more than capable of leading the Belgian team through a successful competition, the absence of two-time Olympic medalist teammate Wout van Aert will serve as a bump in the road after a crash on a downhill at the Vuelta a España ruled him out for the rest of the season.
Kristen Faulkner
USA’s Kristen Faulkner made history in Paris as the third woman to win Olympic gold in two different disciplines (track cycling and road cycling) at a single Games, after the Netherlands Leontien Ziljaard-van Moorsel also clinched golds in track and road cycling in 2000, and Czechia’s Esther Ledecka in alpine skiing and snowboarding in 2018.
The road race victory came as somewhat of a surprise to Faulkner and the world, as she was a last-minute entry who thought of the race as more of a supplementary event to her track races, but came out on top of the coveted Olympic podium in Paris. From a small fishing village in Alaska, the 31-year-old has never landed on a podium at the World Championships, so adding a world medal to her Olympic hardware would make for quite the year for Faulkner.
Gold medalist Kristen Faulkner poses on the podium after winning the Women's Road Race at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Trocadero on August 04, 2024.
Tadej Pogacar
Though many eyes will be on Evenepoel as he walks in as the heavy favorite for gold in Zurich, Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar poses a serious threat to the Belgian’s winning streak.
The 25-year-old is on fire this year, having taken a third career Tour de France victory that came just weeks after he won the 2024 Giro d’Italia. Winning both titles in a single year is something that has only been accomplished by eight riders in the history of the sport, and Pogacar was the first to do it since Marco Pantani in 1998. He did not compete at Paris 2024 due to what the Slovenian Olympic Committee cited as “extreme fatigue” after the two races, so Pogacar will be looking to land back on top of a major podium in Zurich.
Grace Brown
Making the most of the tough and slippery day that took place for the Paris 2024 women’s individual time trial was Australia’s Grace Brown, who beat out all of the other gold medal favorites to come out on top and clinch her first Olympic crown.
2024 marks her final pro season, and if she is able to accomplish the incredible feat of winning an Olympic and World gold medal in the same year, it would be quite the way to go out with a bang. She is yet to land on top of the podium at the World Championships, but is a two-time silver medallist who took second place in the 2022 and 2023 time trial races.
Chloé Dygert
After a crash on the slippery Parisian course forced USA’s Chloé Dygert to settle for the time trial bronze medal at Paris 2024, the reigning world champion will be looking to land back on top of the podium in Zurich.
For the majority of the Olympic race, Dygert had a good handle on the leading time that belonged to eventual gold medallist Grace Brown, but the slippery cobblestone got the best of her towards the end of the race and the crash left her just under two seconds from the gold medal. The 27-year-old boasts a total of 12 titles from the World Championships, where her first two came in 2015 in the individual time trial and road race. In Zurich, she will be looking to extend her reign and add to her already stacked pile of World Championship gold medals.