![\"Brandon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/brandon-mcnulty-on-the-podium-of-the-2026-montreal-world-championships-6ab98602bf041.jpg@webp.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This way, De Cauwer carefully comes to the conclusion, that everything went fine… until it was the turn of team leader Remco Evenepoel. The Olympic champion, who had won the World Championships time trial for a fourth year in a row, simply lacked the level to compete with the best on the day and often found himself hastily fixing the damage done.<\/p>\n
Thus it wasn’t surprising that Evenepoel barely managed to play a role in the finale, with as much as one promising attack which however did not last for more than a dozen seconds. And in the sprint for silver and bronze medals, the Belgian simply lacked any cards to play.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s when Remco needed to step up, but he didn’t. And so, we arrive at the conclusion the riders themselves have already reached: it wasn’t good enough. If the goal was to put the finishing touches on a successful season just a week after winning the time trial world title, that certainly didn’t happen.”<\/p>\n
“Those legs simply weren’t good enough”<\/p>\n
De Cauwer noted that the race plan wasn’t the issue. “Not with those legs. They simply weren’t good enough for that. The course didn’t lie. A Remco in top form – with the right legs – could have pulled it off. But at a certain point, it became clear things would be difficult when he was trailing at the back of the chase group.”<\/p>\n
When Remco accelerated in the final laps, it seemed as though he might’ve kept something extra left, but that hope was quickly gone. “For a moment, we thought he was playing a tactical game,” De Cauwer analyzed. That turned out not to be the case. “Our expected contender didn’t have the legs,” was the rather clear conclusion.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Brandon McNulty on the podium of the 2026 Montreal World Championships<\/p>\n
Blow out<\/p>\n
With Brandon McNulty emerging as the surprise winner, the disappointment was perhaps even greater. That showed that, perhaps, the Belgian team bet on the wrong horse on Sunday, and perhaps should’ve gone for Wout Van Aert or another more versatile rider as a second option, rather than go all-out for Evenepoel.<\/p>\n
But who would’ve guessed the Tour de France runner-up would not find any legs after his dominant time trial victory…<\/p>\n
Because as it turned out, the World Championship was far less of a race for pure climbers than anticipated. “In that respect, we missed having a top-form Remco here. Let’s assume he would have stood out above the rest. After all, today we saw that Del Toro and Seixas couldn’t break away from each other.”<\/p>\n
That played into the hands of other riders. “It opens the door for someone like Mathieu van der Poel to come through the field. With a Remco in top form, things would have been different,” assessed De Cauwer, noting that Van der Poel could well have become world champion. “But then again, so could Matthews. We saw so many shifts in the race that we still gave Remco Evenepoel a chance in the closing stages. Even Pedersen came back into the picture on the final lap.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This way, De Cauwer carefully comes to the conclusion, that everything went fine… until it was the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,177802,8396,85,25247],"class_list":["post-909255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-jose-de-cauwer","tag-remco-evenepoel","tag-sports","tag-world-championships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909255","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=909255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}