The 2024 World Championship in Zurich suits bands and stars of the classics
The routes for the 2024 World Road Championships in Zurich were revealed on the final weekend of the Glasgow ‘super Worlds’ before Lotte Kopecky won the women’s road race with Switzerland hosting the world’s best riders from 21-29 September.
Zurich hosts the finale of the flagship events, with the men’s road race starting northwest of the city in Winterthur and the women’s race in the east in Uster. The routes include a similarly tough finish track from Zurich city center to Glasgow, but without as many turns and are 279.2 km and 157.6 km respectively.
Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel and Wout Van Aert are among those who at the beginning of the discussion are best suited to brutal parkour.
The route to Zurich undulates continuously, with Kyburg (1.2km at 12%) the toughest early punch in the men and Binz (4.6km at 4.5%) the women’s early test, before the Zürichbergstrasse ( 1.1km at 8%) and Witikon (2.3km at 5.7%) follow each track and will decide the race.
Breaking news: Race altitude profiles for the 2024 UCI Road and Para-cycling Road World Championships in Zurich have been revealed. See what’s in store for the world’s best cyclists and paracyclists.https://t.co/1YMAAiFufL#TogetherWeRide #Zurich2024August 14, 2023
Swiss stars Stefan Küng and Stefan Bisseger were at the launch after competing in Glasgow and Stirling to assess the course. Küng was outstanding in this year’s road race finishing fifth behind only Mathieu Van der Poel, Van Aert, Pogačar and Mads Pedersen.
“With the two climbs on the road race circuit, there will be traffic in the races. They will be open and exciting,” Küng said. “The matches will definitely be tough,” Bisseger added.
The track itself is 27km long and will be tackled four times in the women’s race and seven times in the men’s, equating to an extremely tough day that should produce similarly exciting races as the 2022 World Championship for the best Classics riders in the world. outside.
Kopecky and Mathieu van der Poel will arrive in Zurich in 2024 as defending champions after both won solos in two of the most exciting races of the year in Glasgow.
Time trials
Both elite individual time trials finish at Zurich’s Sechseläutenplatz after a course of 30 kilometers for the women and 46.3 kilometers for the men. The last kilometers run alongside the picturesque Lake Zurich.
The men’s course is mostly flat for the opening 20km before four hills of varying difficulty meet midway before the flat course in Zurich. The women will face a different challenge with just five kilometers of flat road from the start in Gossau ZH before tackling the same four hills before the flat finale.
Newly crowned ITT Men’s World Champion Remco Evenepoel will likely be the favorite to defend the rainbow jersey on this course which arguably suits him even better than the Stirling course.
The women’s field will be led by two-time ITT World Champion Chloé Dygert as she looks to win a third title on a very tough course.
UCI President David Lapartient was present at the announcement of the routes in Glasgow. “Zurich and the surrounding hills have a long history in cycling and will be the scene of great races,” he said in his welcome.
Zurich 2024 sees the World Championship return to its regular place on the calendar in September, giving Van der Poel, Kopekcy, Evenepoel and Dygert unusually long spells in their respective rainbow jerseys.
Alongside the elite events will also be the junior, u23 and para road cycling events.
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