Riley Sheehan hits out at selectors after missing USA Road Worlds selection

NSN rider Riley Sheehan has taken to social media to apparently complain about missing out on selection for the USA’s team at the upcoming UCI Road World Championships in Montreal, Canada.

Sheehan didn’t make the eight-man team for the 273km elite men’s race. Instead, selectors picked Matteo Jorgenson, Brandon McNulty, Neilson Powless, Sean Quinn, Artem Shmidt, Quinn Simmons, Kevin Vermaerke, and Larry Warbasse.

“Let’s not select the guys who’ve been winning races…” Sheehan wrote in a post on Twitter.

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Former Paris-Tours champion Sheehan, 26, has taken two wins this season, triumphing at the Circuit de Wallonie and stage 1 of the recent Czech Tour. He also finished runner-up at June’s Tour de Wallonie.

Of the eight riders selected, five of them have yet to win a race in 2026, including Jorgenson and McNulty.

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Powless, Shmidt, and Simmons have taken five wins between them this season, including US road and time trial titles, the Classique Dunkerque, and stages of the Tour of Austria and the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

Sheehan has raced the elite Road Worlds once before, registering a DNF in Zurich, Switzerland, two years ago.

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He has been one of the USA’s top-performing racers this year, currently the nation’s sixth-highest rider in the UCI rankings on 695 points.

Above him, Matthew Riccitello and Sepp Kuss were also not selected, though both are in the midst of racing the Tour-Vuelta double.

USA Cycling’s selection policy emphasises past Worlds results before looking at rider’s stand-out results in a range of other races throughout the calendar.

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“Any athlete who earns a top five (5) in a European UCI World Tour one-day race (1.WWT, 1.UWT) on a course similar in length, profile and demands as the 2026 World Championships Road Race between the dates of January 1, 2026, and August 16, 2026, will be nominated to the Team,” the policy reads.

“If quota positions remain after considering the preceding criteria, any athlete who earns a top five (5) General Classification in a European UCI World Tour stage race (2.WWT, 2.UWT) between the dates of January 1, 2026, and August 16, 2026, will be nominated to the Team.

“If quota positions remain after considering the preceding criteria, the winner of the 2026 USA Cycling Elite Road Race National Championships, provided the race is held in its entirety and run under UCI regulations, will be nominated to the Team.

“If quota positions remain after considering the preceding criteria, athletes may be nominated to the Team through discretionary criteria.”

The USA men’s team will head to Canada looking to improve on recent results at the Road Worlds, with standouts over the past three years being 11th by Powless in 2023 and ninth by Simmons in 2024.

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