{"id":894088,"date":"2026-09-16T12:48:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T12:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894088\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T12:48:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T12:48:25","slug":"french-adds-pressure-to-belgium-ahead-of-world-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894088\/","title":{"rendered":"French adds pressure to Belgium ahead of world championships"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Wout van Aert<\/a> and Remco Evenepoel<\/a>, the Belgian team is heading to the World Cycling Championships<\/a> in Montreal with just one goal: to bring home the rainbow jersey. Of course, there are plenty of contenders, with France among the strongest teams at the start. How does national team coach Thomas Voeckler<\/a> view the Belgian team leaders?France will field strong riders<\/a> such as Valentin Paret-Peintre, Pavel Sivakov, and Alex Baudin, but of course, all eyes are on Paul Seixas<\/a>. The 19-year-old rider from Decathlon CMA CGM is having a breakout year and has already shown his strength in the Canadian one-day races. There, however, he was beaten by Remco Evenepoel and Isaac Del Toro<\/a>.But Voeckler is drawing a great deal of courage from the GP Qu\u00e9bec and GP Montr\u00e9al. \u201cDel Toro was very strong, and many riders are tailoring their race to Evenepoel,\u201d he tells Sporza<\/a>. \u201cWe French have a rider who had the courage not to wait for Evenepoel and to ride his own race.\u201d At the GP Montr\u00e9al, Seixas lost the sprint to Del Toro.<\/p>\n

The Mexican proved to be incredibly strong, but the French national team coach doesn\u2019t see him as the top favourite. That honour goes entirely to the two leaders of the Belgian team. \u201cIt\u2019s like I said before: everyone is talking about Belgium at the World Championships. Of course they\u2019re the favourites and Remco Evenepoel is the favourite, but it would be a mistake to race only against Belgium.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"wout-van-aert-remco-evenepoel\"\/Voeckler: ‘Belgium should normally win’<\/p>\n

Van Aert\u2019s strength is precisely why the Belgians are so feared. But isn\u2019t the course too tough for him? \u201cWout van Aert should be able to handle the toughest climbs on the course. But that will depend on how the race unfolds. The answer doesn\u2019t depend on the climbs themselves, but on how they race on them and how tough the race is leading up to those climbs. I know Wout pretty well. He now has two weeks to recover and will be even better than he was in the Vuelta.\u201d<\/p>\n

With top domestiques like Tiesj Benoot, Thibau Nys, and Maxim Van Gils, the Belgian team has definitely sent its strongest squad to Canada<\/a>. That\u2019s why Voeckler is putting the pressure on them. \u201cThis is the team best equipped to win the world title, and the team that\u2014in the absence of Tadej and with Remco and Wout\u2014should normally win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seixas will definitely be one of the top contenders, but given his lack of experience, the French national team coach doesn\u2019t want to get ahead of himself. \u201cIt\u2019s only natural that Belgium is considered the favorite. Paul Seixas isn\u2019t the same age and is at a different stage in his career. We shouldn\u2019t compare him to Remco, who is already a two-time Olympic champion and has won so much more.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Wout van Aert and Remco Evenepoel, the Belgian team is heading to the World Cycling Championships in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,16656,176605,8396,85,165535,58412],"class_list":["post-894088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-cycling-world-championships","tag-paul-seixas","tag-remco-evenepoel","tag-sports","tag-thomas-voeckler","tag-wout-van-aert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}