How to Watch the 2023 UCI World Championships Men’s Road Race

The year’s world road race championships are taking place in Scotland and the start list is filled with riders hoping to take home the rainbow jersey as the men’s elite road race champion.

This year’s UCI World Road Championships are being held in Glasgow, Scotland–but two months earlier than usual as the sport tries to get back to the “good old days” when cycling crowned its world road race champions a few weeks after each summer’s Tour de France.

In addition to its new (old) spot on the calendar, the world championships are adopting a new format as well: every four years–instead of having the road, mountain bike, track, BMX, indoor, trials, gran fondo, and para-cycling championships on separate dates and in different places–a “mega” event will be organized, creating a 10-day festival of cycling that will award over 200 rainbow jerseys in 13 championships. They’re calling it the UCI Cycling World Championships; it’s essentially the Olympics of cycling.

The road events begin on Saturday, August 5 with the men’s and women’s junior road races. But while we enjoy watching the sport’s future champions fight to win their own rainbow jerseys, it’s the elite races that we really get excited about, starting with Sunday’s elite men’s event. The women’s elite road race is scheduled for a week later on Sunday, August 13.

Here’s a run-down of everything you need to know:

The Route

The elite men will race a total of 271km, making this one of the longest one-day races of the season. The race begins in Edinburgh and then winds its way west to Glasgow via a 120km route that takes them across the Firth of Forth (an estuary formed by several Scottish rivers) and into some hills north of Glasgow. The toughest of these is the climb up and over Crow Road, 96km into the race. It’s just 5.8km long and has an average gradient of a measly 4.5 percent, so it won’t do much damage.

But as is always the case in a world championship road race, the race will be decided on the 14.3km circuit through downtown Glasgow, which the riders will cover 10 times. It’s an extremely technical circuit, one filled with tight roads, lots of corners, some speed bumps, and even a few short sections of (decorative) cobbles.

It’s not a particularly difficult circuit in terms of elevation gain. There’s just one climb–Montrose Street–a 200m ascent with an average gradient of 10.8 percent gradient and a pitch that hits out at 14 percent near the middle of the climb. The riders crest this “ramp” less than 2km from the finish line, making it the strategic focal point of the finale and the logical launchpad for riders hoping to escape the bunch late in the race. Whether or not the climb is long enough to create any meaningful selections remains to be seen.

In the end, we expect the race to come down to which teams and riders are able to conserve as much energy as possible on these 10 tricky downtown circuits. It will be hard to regain position at the front of the bunch and with so many corners, riders who find themselves sprinting out of corners from the back of the peloton will waste energy that they could have used in the finale.

Look for an elite group of riders to ultimately pull away–or survive if the race becomes one of attrition–with a small group sprint determining the winner. It’s a perfect race for the Belgian national team, who will line-up with Remco Evenepoel, the defending champion; Wout van Aert, who can both attack and sprint and sprint his way to victory; and Jasper Philipsen, who can win a field sprint if all attacks fail and a large group hits the finish line together.

How to Watch

If you signed-up with FloBikes ($150/year or a monthly subscription for $29.99) during the spring Classics and never canceled your subscription, you’re in luck: it’s the only legal way to stream the race in the USA and Canada. The race will be available live and on-demand via FloBikes.com, the FloSports IOS app, and the FloSports app for Amazon FireTV, Roku, and Apple TV.

Scotland is five hours ahead of folks on the East Coast, which means the race begins at 4:30 a.m. EDT. But we won’t be setting an alarm: the first few hours of the race are usually pretty tame, with a large breakaway of riders who aren’t expected to challenge for the world title escaping to get themselves and their national team kits on TV. Instead we’ll be tuning in for the final 4 or 5 laps–at around 9:00 a.m. EDT–with the race expected to wrap up by 10:45 a.m. EDT.

What Happened Last Year

Last year’s world road championships were held in Australia, with the road races starting south of Sydney and concluding with a series of circuits in and around Wollongong, a small town on the country’s Pacific coast.

In the men’s race, Evenepoel–just two weeks after winning the Tour of Spain–escaped from a large group about 25km from the finish and soloed to his first elite world championship (he won the junior race in 2018). More than two minutes later, France’s Christophe Laporte and Australia's Michael Matthews finished first and second in the group sprint to take silver and bronze. Van Aert, the pre-race favorite, finished a disappointing fourth. With his teammate up the road and on his way to winning the race, there was little the Belgian could do.

Riders to Watch

Mathieu van der Poel (the Netherlands)

This spring, van der Poel reminded us why he’s one of the best one-day riders in the sport, winning two of cycling’s five Monuments: Milano-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix. He then finished his first Tour de France, where he proved to be one of the sport’s best lead-out men, helping Philipsen to four stage wins and the green jersey. Now he’s hoping for his first world road race title as an elite (he won the junior race back in 2013). He’s the perfect rider for a course like Glasgow’s: he can follow any attacks that might go on Montrose Road and handle himself in a small bunch sprint if no one’s able to get away.

Wout van Aert (Belgium)

Van Aert is one of the two or three most talented riders in the sport, but he continues to come up short when it comes to winning the biggest events on his wish list: the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, and Worlds. The 28-year-old chose not to go for the green jersey at this year’s Tour de France in order to time his peak fitness for worlds. Like van der Poel, the course in Glasgow seems made for him and he joins his Dutch nemesis as the race’s top favorite.

Remco Evenepoel (Belgium)

The defending champion, Evenepoel is likely wishing that the course were tougher, as the Glasgow circuit doesn’t give him many chances to attack. His best bet is to initiate a move that’s earlier than most teams might be expecting, thus forcing the competition to choose between letting the defending champion go up the road or pulling his teammates back into contention. Winner of Saturday’s Clásica San Sebastián, he’s clearly in top form, but between the course and the depth of his team, we wonder if he’ll have a chance to show it on Sunday.

Tadej Pogačar (Slovenia)

Pogačar took some time off after finishing second at the Tour de France in July and for a while didn’t look like he would be heading to worlds at all. But then he popped up on Strava taking the KOM on the Col de la Madone, one of the most famous training climbs in pro cycling history–and announced he was racing. The climbs in Glasgow aren’t hard enough to give him an edge over riders like van Aert and van der Poel, and his team isn’t deep enough to have a strategic advantage over anyone else. But he’s Tadej-Freaking-Pogačar and has to be considered a contender in any race he enters.

Jasper Philipsen (Belgium)

Despite lining up alongside van Aert and Evenepoel, Philipsen might be Belgium’s most important rider, as the sprinter’s presence gives the team an important card to play in the finale. Despite winning four stages and the green jersey at the Tour de France, he’s not a pure field sprinter. He’s actually more versatile than many give him credit for, and he’s someone we could see turning into a pretty handy Classics rider in the next few years. Case in point: he finished second at Paris-Roubaix after spending much of the day in the breakaway, then still having the legs to work for van der Poel in the finale, and then having enough left in the tank to win the sprint for second. With Evenepoel and van Aert featuring in any attacks that go in the finale, Philipsen will be able to sit in the bunch to keep his legs fresh for a possible field sprint, making him a savvy pick to win the rainbow jersey.

Mads Pedersen (Denmark)

Pedersen won Worlds in atrocious conditions in 2019, then missed out on showing off his rainbow jersey due to Covid-19. He starts this year’s race in a position similar to Philipsen. The race will likely not be hard enough to drop him, and he’s strong enough in a sprint to be able to win the race from a group. In the end his prospects will come down to how well his teammates are able to keep him at the front and out of trouble while sending a dangerous rider or two up the road in any moves containing Evenepoel, van der Poel, or van Aert. Luckily for Pedersen, his team is the deepest in the race after the Belgians, with guys like Mattias Skjelmose, Kasper Asgreen, and Magnus Cort all strong enough to win the race on their own–and therefore a strategic threat to other teams.

Julian Alaphilippe (France)

Alaphilippe won back-to-back titles in 2020 and 2021, but has been a shadow of his former self since crashing badly at last year’s Liège–Bastogne–Liège. But he’s been relatively healthy and finished the Tour de France, which means his fitness is where it needs to be for a race like Worlds. And with everyone looking at the Belgians, the Dutch, and the Danes as the race’s three best teams, Alaphilippe could capitalize with one stiff attack late in the race–like he did in 2021 when he upset van Aert on his home turf to defend his title. And if he doesn’t, his teammate–and last year’s runner-up–Laporte, could bring home the title instead.

We’ll also be keeping an eye on Great Britain’s Fred Wright, Switzerland’s Mark Hirschi, Ireland’s Ben Healy, and Eritrea’s Biniam Girmay.

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