How to Watch the 2023 UCI World Championships Women’s Road Race
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The year’s world road championships conclude on Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland with the Elite women’s road race. And if last Sunday’s men’s event is any indicator, you won’t want to miss it.
This year’s UCI Cycling World Championships wrap-up on Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland, and the event has really been something special: 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 was organized, creating a 10-day festival of cycling that awarded over 200 rainbow jerseys in 13 championships.
The road championships began last Saturday with the men’s and women’s Junior road races and continued on Sunday with the Elite men’s road race. Road events continue throughout the week with Tuesday’s mixed relay race; individual times trials for all age groups on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; and Saturday’s road race for Under-23 men.
The championships conclude with Sunday’s Elite women’s road race, the final road event of this year’s “mega” worlds and a race that’s always one of most exciting of the season. Here’s everything you need to know about it:
The Route
The Elite and Under-23 women (the categories are combined until 2025) race a total of 154km, making Sunday’s race–like its male counterpart–one of the longest one-day races of the season.
The race begins in Jamestown, just south of the shores of Loch Lomond, and then loops its way northeast through Gartocharn, Drymen, and Fintry, where it joins the route the men rode from Edinburgh to Glasgow last Sunday. This means the women will also head over Crow Road, a 5.8km climb with an average gradient of 4.5 percent.
But the summit comes just 33km into the race, so it should do little more than give the favorites a chance to warm-up before the race hits Glasgow for six laps of a 143.km city circuit that has quickly made a name for itself as one of the hardest world championship circuits in history.
The Glasgow circuit is extremely technical, with–depending on who's counting–about 50 corners (per lap!) and several steep ramps. (It’s hard to call them “climbs” as none of them are longer than a few hundred meters–but if you watched the men’s race, you know the damage they can do.) There are even a few sections of cobblestones, although they’re more cosmetic than destructive.
It’s as if this circuit is the perverted love child of a criterium, a cyclocross race, and a Flemish one-day Classic–which makes sense considering that the men’s gold and silver medals went to the Netherlands’ Mathieu van der Poel and Belgium’s Wout van Aert–two of the best cyclocross racers and Classics riders in the world.
The strategic and pre-Worlds focal point of the circuit is the climb up Montrose Street, a 200m ramp with 10.8 percent average gradient and a pitch that hits 14 percent near the middle of the climb. The racers crest it about 1.4km from the finish line, making it a logical launchpad for anyone hoping to escape late in the race.
But there are several other sections of the circuit that are just as hard, and in the men’s race it seemed as if the far side of the circuit (around and through the Park District) was where most of the damage was done–including van der Poel’s race-winning attack.
In the end, the race will become one of attrition and should be won by a rider who’s able to conserve as much energy as possible on the early laps while handling the constant accelerations out of the corners and over the circuit’s steep ramps and bumps. Bike handling will also be key: if it rains on Sunday–as it did at time for the men–there will be crashes on Glasgow’s slick city roads.
The winner will need a little luck as well: crashes or mechanical issues will put a premature end to any rider’s day, as there’s no chance of rejoining the leading group once dropped. And without radios (world championship events are raced without race radios that allow riders to communicate with their team cars), information will be hard to come by, so the riders might have to race on instinct and feel.
In the end, the men’s event had only 51 finishers, making it the second-most punishing road race in the event’s history. Even Slovenia’s Tadej Pogačar, who’s arguably the best all-round male rider in the sport, called last Sunday’s race the hardest day he’s ever had on the bike. And we expect a similar level of excitement and intensity when the women hit Glasgow this weekend. Get your popcorn!
How to Watch
FloBikes ($150/year or $12.50/month) is the only legal way to stream the race in the USA and Canada. It’s available live and on-demand via FloBikes.com, the FloSports IOS app, and the FloSports app for Amazon FireTV, Roku, and Apple TV. So if you signed-up during the spring Classics and never canceled your subscription, you’re in luck.
Scotland is five hours ahead of folks on the East Coast, which means the race begins at 7:00 a.m. EDT. We’ll be up early to watch the race as it loops northeast from Loch Lomond and down through the hills north of Glasgow. And assuming no one decides to glue themselves to the road, they’ll enter the city circuit for the first time at about 8:30 a.m. EDT–which is the latest we suggest tuning in given the fireworks the circuit produced in the men’s race.
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 164km women’s race, the Netherlands’ Annemiek van Vleuten escaped from an elite group of 12 riders inside the final kilometer, overcoming a broken elbow that she sustained in a crash earlier in the week to win the world road race championship for the second time in her career.
It was a stunning performance given her injury. Dropped more than once on the circuit’s main climb, she barely made the final selection and decided that a surprise attack about a kilometer from the finish line was her best and only chance to win. She was right.
Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky outsprinted Italy’s Silvia Persico to win silver one second behind the then-39-year-old. New Zealand’s Niamh Fischer-Black finished twelfth, but was awarded a rainbow jersey as the best Under-23 rider. (We can’t wait for this system to change in 2025, when the Under-23 women will get their own stand-alone events.)
Riders to Watch
Lotte Kopecky (Belgium)
In Sunday’s men’s race, the top-4 finishers had collectively won three Tours of Flanders, two Ghent-Wevelgems, and a pile of other Flemish Classics, making this year’s world championships a race for the sport’s one-day specialists.
Well, Kopecky–who recently finished second overall at the Tour de Frances Femmes and just won a gold medal on the track in the elimination race–just so happens to be the two-time defending champion in the women’s Tour of Flanders and has won her own pile of other Classics and semi-Classics. Second last year, she’s the perfect type of rider for a course like this one and is the undisputed leader of her team. She’s the top favorite.
Demi Vollering (the Netherlands)
Vollering won the recent Tour de Frances Femmes and might be on the backside of her best fitness, but after missing last year’s race due to Covid-19, she’s eager to add a rainbow jersey to the yellow jersey she took two weeks earlier.
She’s become one of the sport’s best Classics riders, winning this year’s Strade Bianche, the Amstel Gold Race, Fleche Wallonne, and Liege-Bastogne-Liege–she also finished second to her trade team teammate–Kopecky–at the Tour of Flanders. Assuming she’s managed to maintain her fitness from the Tour–and she can overcome the inter-squad dynamics of her talented Dutch team–she joins Kopecky as a top favorite in Glasgow.
Annemiek Van Vleuten (the Netherlands)
Van Vleuten came up short at the recent Tour de France Femmes, failing to defend her title on her way to fourth-place finish overall. But she’s still a contender here, despite the race course favoring riders who are a bit more explosive than van Vleuten at this stage in her career (she’s retiring at the end of the season).
But she’s never one to be overlooked, and could capitalize on the fact that her team has several contenders for the title. Look for her to launch a long-range attack and then try to time trial her way to the win–while her talented teammates cover counter-attacks behind her. And if she’s caught, they’re set-up perfectly for counter-attacks of their own.
Kasia Niewiadoma (Poland)
Niewiadoma is one of the most entertaining cyclists in the sport in that she’s never afraid to attack. For example, her attack on the descent of the Col d’Aspin during the penultimate stage of the recent Tour de France Femmes ignited the finale–she then held on to finish second on the stage atop the Tourmalet and then time-trialed her way to third overall in the Tour.
She’s the perfect rider for a course like Glasgow’s, and assuming the Belgians and Dutch spend too much time looking at one another, she could capitalize to take the biggest win of her career.
Marianne Vos (the Netherlands)
One of the two of three most accomplished women’s cyclist’s in history, Vos comes to Worlds after a lackluster Tour de France Femmes–by her standards at least–but looks primed for a good ride in Glasgow.
Like van der Poel and van Aert, she’s made a name for herself as a cyclocross and Classics rider, who should have issues with Glasgow’s challenging city circuit. She’s also a top-notch sprinter, and should a select group hit the finish line together, she and Kopecky will go head-to-head for the win.
Coryn Labecki and Chloe Dygert (United States)
Labecki and Dygert are the top American contenders in Glasgow. Labecki’s worth keeping an eye on for one main reason: she’s one of the best criterium riders in the world. And Dygert, who beat Labecki at the National Championships in June, is just getting back to where she was before a horrible crash in the individual time trial at Worlds in 2020: she won the individual pursuit on the track last Thursday and is a top favorite in the time trial this Thursday. If an American brings home the rainbow jersey, expect it to be one of them.
Shirin van Anrooij (the Netherlands)
Assuming she’s not asked to sacrifice her own chances for the sake of her teammates, Anrooij is the top favorite to come away with the Under-23 title on Sunday. Just 21-years-old, she’s coming into her own this season, having won the Trofeo Alfredo Binda in March while also scoring top-10 finishes in Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Tour of Flanders, and the Amstel Gold Race. She’s also an accomplished cyclocross rider: she won a World Cup race in January. The favorite for the Under-23 title, she’s a dark horse to win the whole thing!
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