As soon as UAE Team Emirates-XRG confirmed that even Tadej Pogačar was going to be unable to come back from his crash at the Vuelta a España in time for the World Championships and the rest of the 2026 season, the entire complexion of the next two months of racing changed completely.
Ask anyone to predict how the remainder of the Vuelta, Worlds, the European Championships, and the final Monument of the year at Il Lombardia were going to go before August 29, and no one would have said anything but a clean sweep from Pogačar.
It means Peter Sagan won’t be matched when it comes to winning the elite men’s road race rainbow jersey three times in a row, and Fausto Coppi’s record of five Lombardy titles won’t be surpassed by Pogačar, who equalled the feat last October. In a flash, one high-speed crash on a nondescript section of road in stage 8 of the Tour of Spain has made victory at several of cycling’s most prestigious races a genuine possibility for more than just one rider.
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After surely originally planning to work out how they were going to anticipate or dream of just following the Slovenian when he made his inevitable move on the Mount Royal course in Canada, national coaches of the biggest teams will have had to completely change their strategies.
Pogačar taking victory was by no means guaranteed – look at how predicting that same fate for the Vuelta went – but his rivals would have been planning their tactics for him being there, and this shift could mean a significantly more competitive, and more compelling, battle for the rainbow jersey, perhaps unseen since Glasgow 2023 when the Slovenian last didn’t win.
Who steps up into the void?
It’s fair to say Belgium have moved into the spot of favourites, Remco Evenepoel and a red-hot Wout van Aert being their co-leaders, with Paul Seixas (France), Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands), Isaac del Toro (Mexico), Mads Pedersen (Denmark), and Tom Pidcock (Great Britain) also projected as main contenders.
Evenepoel was second to Pogačar at all three of the Worlds, Europeans, and Lombardy 12 months ago, making him the logical next best option on the start line. On each of those occasions, he was the closest to following the winning move, and while still forced to concede defeat each time to the superior rider, the next finisher behind him in third was 48 seconds back in Kigali (Ben Healy), 2:10 back in Guilherand-Granges (Paul Seixas), and 1:26 down in Bergamo (Michael Storer).
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By those metrics, it’s easy to assume Evenepoel will rise to his status as the favourite and scorch away solo on the roads of Montreal, with the 273.2 kilometres, 3,800 metres of elevation gain, and 12 laps of the punchy 13.4km finishing circuit giving him ample opportunities to attack away on the climbs or the flat. And if he gets up the road as he did four years ago in Australia, he will be nigh on impossible to bring back.
But can the Belgian team do what the Slovenians did in Zurich two years ago, Rwanda last season, and what they were likely planning on doing again come September 27? Blowing up the race early and attacking from long-range distances unseen since the days of Coppi or Eddy Merckx has become somewhat normalised in the era of Pogačar, but it’s forgivable to forget just how he is often making the long-thought impossible in today’s cycling seem easy.
In theory, yes, the Belgian’s could, of course, with Gianni Vermeersch, Maxim Van Gils, Thibau Nys, Tiesj Benoot, Quinten Hermans, and Alec Segaert making up a versatile team with great options for decimating the peloton and positioning their leaders. But with Van Aert also among their ranks, it makes things more complicated for the Belgians.
One of the greatest strengths of having Pogačar on your team, aside from the obvious complete superiority when it comes to power and race-winning ruthlessness, is how tactically simple he makes races for his teammates.
Yes, they still have to be strong enough to execute the plan, position him, and the word simple isn’t apt for the kind of effort it requires to launch someone into 50km, 75km, or even 100km solo attacks. But what he does guarantee, though, is clarity, both of leadership and everyone else’s roles in support of him. And it’s here where the new favourites for the Montreal road race in Pogačar’s absence could come unstuck.
Fielding two leaders in Evenepoel and Van Aert is a combination that has both succeeded and failed in the past, with the former benefiting most, en route to the rainbow jersey in Wollongong 2022 and an Olympic Gold medal in Paris 2024. But it’s also seen them fail to capitalise on having the strongest team before, such as Leuven in 2021, with the stardom and versatility of both making it impossible to force one to ride in aid of the other, hampering their chances.
Should Van Aert sacrifice his hopes in pursuit of the best chance of an Evenepoel solo win? No, he shouldn’t, nor will he, especially when you consider the possibility that someone like Seixas or Del Toro will be able to live with him when he makes his move.
Belgium will likely need both of their leaders to be in play in the finale to get the balance right, with the threat of either winning solo or from a sprint allowing the other some breathing room when it comes to how the tactics unfold on the road.
What’s safe to say, though, is that an early destruction of the whole race, one as early as the Slovenian surely would have tried, and a pure test of who has the best legs on the day – as Pogačar has made the past two Worlds road races – looks unlikely.
Tactics will be king, and in a race without race radios, that becomes even more complicated
No Pogačar brings the likes of Van der Poel and Van Aert more into play
When the course was unveiled as the third climbing-heavy Worlds course in a row, Pogačar was always going to be starting as the heavy favourite, but with the way he races, it also pushed top one-day racers like Van der Poel and Van Aert down the pecking order.
If the double reigning champion made the race as hard as he did in Zurich and Rwanda, the cumulative effect of all the attritional climbing would surely do for the heavier, more punchy Classics specialists, leaning the race in favour of the climbers like Seixas and Evenepoel.
But the route in Montreal is, on paper, not going to be as difficult for the likes of the 2023 rainbow jersey winner, Van der Poel. In Rwanda, the riders had almost 5,500 metres of elevation gain, but the laps around Mount Royal Park in Canada only take the total up to 3,800m. That’s still 700 fewer than that of Zurich in 2024, where, yes, Pogačar was still far and away the strongest and attacked audaciously far out from the finish, but Van der Poel was probably the second strongest rider on the course that day, despite eventually finishing third.
Again, considering this, can Belgium do the same kind of damage Slovenia and a likely early Pogačar onslaught was going to? It seems somewhat impossible to expect as much, as keeping Van Aert in the game should prove incredibly valuable.
Liberated by his first Monument victory for six years at Paris-Roubaix, and in flying form at the Vuelta, it could be the best chance for the twice runner-up at Worlds to finally have his moment. On his very best, he’s more than capable of matching the biggest moves on the key uphill sections – the Camillien-Houde climbs (2.3km at 6.2%) and gradients pushing 11% maximum on the Polytechnique climb – and he can win from a solo move, bunch sprint, or small breakaway sprint.
The last time he raced at the GP Montreal WorldTour one-day race, which shares several route features with Worlds, he failed to finish, but that came at the end of a long comeback season from injury, where he was already fatigued. His only other appearance saw him finish second from a reduced group sprint, losing out only to a certain Pogačar.
Evenepoel having the threat of Van Aert behind allows him to get away and stay away, as he did in Paris, after the latter had marked his long-term rival Van der Poel on the Montmartre climb – a situation which could unfold in a remarkably similar fashion in Montreal.
Can Seixas and Del Toro follow Evenepoel if and when he does go?
Evenepoel, Van Aert and Van der Poel performing well and being in contention for victory is somewhat guaranteed, barring incident or injury during or before the race, but a bigger question lies in what the young superstars of the sport can do on the brutal course.
Seixas and Del Toro are not only protagonists for the future but also the present, both improving at a rapid rate since turning professional in the past two seasons to already be aptly described as among the top 10 riders in the world.
Both impressed on debut at the Tour de France in July, finishing third and fourth as the next best behind Pogačar and Evenepoel, but both are also top one-day racers already, shown in their finishing on the podium with the Slovenian at Strade Bianche.
If Evenepoel does opt to go early on the climbs and win with brute force, it’s not out of the question that one of these two could follow; just look at what Seixas did at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, pushing Pogačar right to the limit before finally succumbing to the pressure on Roche aux Faucons.
Tearing a muscle in his thigh meant Del Toro wasn’t present at the Ardennes Classics, but he’s got serious experience as a top one-day racer and ruthless winner. Milano-Torino, Gran Piemonte, and the Giro dell’Emilia are already on his palmarès, and while he was seventh at Worlds last year and fifth at Lombardy, he’s only becoming more accustomed to those longer distances as he gets older.
His team is the obvious question mark, likely to be isolated once the key selections are made, but Del Toro is a savvy finisher, and as Pogačar’s likely heir at UAE, will be looking to emulate his team leader and bring Mexico its first rainbow jersey. In contrast, for France and Seixas, they should have one of the strongest eight-man outfits riding in support of their teenage talisman, who turns 20 three days before the road race.
All of those mentioned above will be chomping at the bit to get stuck into the road race, especially knowing that this may be their last chance at a rainbow jersey until perhaps 2029, with Pogačar sure to come back to Haute-Savoie 2027 looking for a spectacular comeback, and the 2028 race likely to be on the flatter roads of Abu Dhabi.
It won’t be the race everyone was expecting it to be before that crash at the Vuelta, but it should be one to remember.
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