{"id":903167,"date":"2026-09-24T01:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T01:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/903167\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T01:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T01:38:11","slug":"van-der-poel-van-aert-and-evenepoel-recon-road-race-route","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/903167\/","title":{"rendered":"Van der Poel, Van Aert and Evenepoel recon road race route"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday was the official \u201crest day\u201d at the World Cycling Championships<\/a>\u2014or so it seemed. Between 10 a.m. and noon in Montreal, the entire circuit was closed to traffic for the official course reconnaissance, and everyone took advantage of it. That included Mathieu van der Poel<\/a>, who hit the road with a few friends. <\/p>\n

Early in the morning, IDL Pro Cycling did our own recon\u2014but on foot. Here are three brief conclusions we were able to draw: the 500-meter finish stretch with a 4 percent grade also plays a role in the subsequent climb to Cote de Camillien-Houde (1.5 kilometers at 7.6 percent).<\/p>\n

After that, it\u2019s mostly a lot of gentle descents and picking up speed, and several national team coaches confided in us that a rider like Remco Evenepoel<\/a> shouldn\u2019t be allowed more than 10 meters of lead during that phase. And, point 3: the uphill stretch past the university, with its three-stage climb, is tougher than the numbers suggest. It\u2019s 800 meters at a 6 percent grade, but it\u2019s actually more like three 150-meter sections at 10 to 11 percent. A tricky one.<\/p>\n

Van der Poel arrived in Canada at 10:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday, after which he headed to the Dutch team\u2019s hotel in nearby Boucherville. There, the Dutch team completed a 37-kilometer ride in the afternoon, knowing that a more intense training session was scheduled for the following day.<\/p>\n

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

\"nederland-montreal-wk\"\/<\/p>\n

The Dutch national team in Montreal.<\/p>\n

Van der Poel hits the road in Montreal with impressive companyThat training ride was partly dedicated to scouting the course in Montreal<\/a>, but they also added another segment afterward. Incidentally, Van der Poel didn\u2019t do the laps in the Canadian city so much with the other Dutch riders, but rather with his regular riding partners Freddy Ovett and Greg Van Avermaet. He also often goes out for rides with the Belgian, who is an ambassador for the World Championships in Montreal.Did they join in, too? George Hincapie and his son Enzo, racing in the junior category. In Van der Poel\u2019s wake, we also saw youth national team coach Tom Leezer, Demi Vollering<\/a>, and\u2014on a bright yellow rental scooter\u2014women\u2019s national team coach Laurens ten Dam pass by. Van der Poel also put the pedal to the metal on the final climb up the Cote de Camillien-Houde, where Van Avermaet couldn\u2019t keep up.The Belgian completed that section<\/a> in 4 minutes and 7 seconds, a full 20 seconds slower than his record time from 2018. Incidentally, the fastest times on the recon day\u2014so far\u2014came from Belgian U23 riders Bert Bolle and Matisse Van Kerckhove, who completed the section in 4 minutes and 1 minute, respectively. Tadej Pogacar took 3 minutes and 27 seconds to complete the course when he won the 2024 GP Montreal.<\/p>\n

Van der Poel will speak with the press again on Thursday evening, at which point we\u2019ll know what he thinks after the recon, but as he was leaving Zaventem, he shared his thoughts on the course once more. \u201cI stand by what I said earlier. Luxembourg hasn\u2019t changed anything there. The World Championship course is simply on the difficult side for riders of my weight. I think everyone agrees on that,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wednesday was the official \u201crest day\u201d at the World Cycling Championships\u2014or so it seemed. Between 10 a.m. and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,16656,22235,301239,77973,8396,85,58412],"class_list":["post-903167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-cycling-world-championships","tag-demi-vollering","tag-latest-cycling-news","tag-mathieu-van-der-poel","tag-remco-evenepoel","tag-sports","tag-wout-van-aert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903167","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=903167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}