The team to beat - Evenepoel, Van Aert, Philipsen and a Worlds balancing act

The World Championships may be in a novel format and a new position on the calendar, but an eternal question endures for the Belgian team ahead of Sunday’s elite men’s road race – who’s the boss? Coach Sven Vanthourenhout has a wealth of options at his disposal, but that only makes the balancing act all the harder.

Defending champion Remco Evenepoel has made no secret of his desire to retain his title. Wout van Aert gave up his shot at the green jersey at the Tour de France with an eye to claiming the rainbow jersey here. Jasper Philipsen, fresh from four stage wins in July, arrives in Scotland with ambitions of his own.

Tom Boonen, world champion in Madrid in 2005 and Belgium’s de facto sprint option for most of his career, maintains that Vanthourenhout’s decision to bring two fast finishers to Scotland has created unnecessary complications. The national coach’s job, Boonen told Sporza’s Wielerclub Wattage show this week, is to make hard choices rather than simply to reward riders for their performances.

“No decisions have been made. I would never have taken Jasper and Wout together to a World Championships. Never,” Boonen said. “The task of a national coach is to eliminate conflicts before the race. And take it from me: there will be those conflicts.”

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The nature of the Glasgow course and Philipsen’s dominance in the sprints at the Tour meant that he was surely impossible to overlook, even allowing for the ill-judged admission that he would struggle to race against Dutch leader and Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Mathieu van der Poel. Van Aert, of course, remains Van Aert, arguably the most versatile rider on the planet. This Worlds course, just like those in Imola, Leuven and Wollongong, looks ideally tailored to his gifts.

“They both deserve it fully, but that's not the point. Is it tactically difficult now? Absolutely,” said Boonen. “You can’t go to the Worlds with two men to do the sprint.”

The man who guided Boonen to that victory in Madrid 18 years ago, mind, has a different view on the inclusion of Philipsen. José De Cauwer said it would have been “nonsense” not to bring Philipsen to Scotland, and he suggested the presence of the Alpecin-Deceuninck man might ultimately help Van Aert rather than hinder him.

“In my opinion, the presence of Remco and Jasper does not have to mean a disadvantage for him,” De Cauwer told Sporza. “Look, if the really good riders go – such as a Pedersen or Van der Poel – then Wout has to be with them. In the sprint, in principle, he can beat anyone. And maybe the presence of Philipsen can even act as a deterrent to the competition.”

The man currently behind the wheel for Belgium also rebuffed Boonen’s view when he spoke to reporters in Glasgow on Friday. "I can already say that there will be no conflicts here," Vanthourenhout said. "The selection is based on what these guys can do.”

Evenepoel being Evenepoel, he provided a timely reminder of his gifts in his last outing in the rainbow jersey at the Clásica San Sebastián last Saturday. His third victory in as many participations at the Basque race was crowned by a rasping effort in the two-up sprint against Pello Bilbao – a message, perhaps, that a long-range attack is no longer the sole weapon in his armoury.

The 23-year-old has certainly made an impression every time he has lined out in the elite road race at the Worlds. In Yorkshire in 2019, he took it upon himself to lead the doomed attempt to bring Philippe Gilbert back into contention after his crash, towing his leader for two laps as though racing against the very idea of losing.

In Leuven in 2021, Evenepoel’s efforts in a long-range move ultimately seemed to play against Van Aert’s interests, leading to a winter of discontent in Belgian cycling. Evenepoel’s camp argued he ought to have been a protected rider, while Van Aert’s felt he had simply overstepped his mark. In Wollongong last September, meanwhile, Evenepoel began the race as co-leader, and his attack from a distance carried him to a crushing victory, while Van Aert had to settle for fourth.

Speaking on Geraint Thomas and Luke Rowe’s Watts Occurring podcast on Thursday, Evenepoel insisted that he could dovetail his ambitions with those of Van Aert and Philipsen while clearly outlining his own case for leadership. Rather than going from distance as he did in Leuven and Wollongong, Evenepoel suggested he could save his attacking for later in the day in Glasgow.

“After what I’ve been showing in the last one-day races I did, I think they should believe in me, that I can go off with 5k to go, especially on a course like this one,” said Evenepoel, though he noted that the ideal scenario for Belgium would be if he and Van Aert found themselves together in a select group out in front.

“The best would be to be together in a group of 15-20 guys. It might be a bit easier for us to play the mental tactical games of going off one after the other, because then they our rivals would look to two guys and not just one. The best for me and for Wout would be to be in the group together.”

The team to beat

On Friday afternoon, the Belgian squad met the press in Scotland ahead of the big day, with Evenepoel, Van Aert and Philipsen all careful to present a united front as they sat down side by side. Van Aert, for instance, acknowledged that Evenepoel and Philipsen had made a better case for leadership with their results in recent weeks, even if the course notionally suits him best of all.

“I think Jasper and Remco have shown more than me over the last three weeks,” Van Aert said. “It’s going to be difficult to manage because we have three different profiles. If each of us had a complete team at his disposal, the tactics would be different. But that’s also easier for us, because we'll be able to play several cards.”

After reconnoitring the twists and turns of the finishing circuit in Glasgow, Philipsen suggested that he might have been wise to ride some more post-Tour criteriums as preparation: “Turning, turning and accelerating a lot after the corners. That's how it will be on Sunday.”

Evenepoel, for his part, likened the course to a Formula 1 circuit and expressed scepticism that the stiff climb of Montrose Street, 2km or so from the finish, would prove as decisive as many anticipated. “It’s probably not going to happen there because everybody knows guys will want to go there,” he said. “I think it can happen in every corner, on every road, it’s going to be full gas racing.”

With that in mind, then, perhaps Vanthourenhout was right to prepare for every eventuality. As well as his troika of leaders, his selection includes men like Victor Campenaerts and Tiesj Benoot, who shone at the Tour and who have the tools to thrive in a race like this. Not for the first time in recent years, the road to the rainbow jersey runs through Belgium.

“Whoever beats the Belgians has a great chance,” Evenepoel said. Their first task, mind, will be to make sure they don’t beat themselves.