{"id":175781,"date":"2025-09-28T16:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T16:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/175781\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T16:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T16:58:08","slug":"pogacar-solos-67-km-to-repeat-as-world-champion-in-rwanda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/175781\/","title":{"rendered":"Poga\u010dar solos 67 km to repeat as world champion in Rwanda"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2025 UCI road world championships in Kigali, Rwanda concluded on Sunday with an expected outcome in the elite men\u2019s road race: Tadej Poga\u010dar successfully defending his rainbow jersey. The Slovenian went solo with 67 km remaining. He joins eight other elite men racers with two titles.<\/p>\n

The Course<\/p>\n

The grueling 267.5-km route didn\u2019t just contain 16 laps of an 13.5-km circuit each with 800-metre C\u00f4te de Kigali Golf at 8 percent and cobbled C\u00f4te de Kimihurura, it also had an extended lap in the middle that went up C\u00f4te de Peage, 6-km Mont Kigali and the vicious little Mur de Kigali.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The culmination of week in Kigali. Image by La FlammeRouge<\/p>\n

The Canadian contingent consisted of the same fellows from the elite men\u2019s time trial, Michael Leonard and Laurent Gervais.<\/p>\n

The day\u2019s breakaway was an all-European septet. Poga\u010dar\u2019s Slovenia, Remco Evenepoel\u2019s Belgium and Australia kept it in check on the early laps as rider after rider abandoned, one of them 2020 and 2021 champion Julian Alaphilippe<\/a>. With 9 laps remaining, the gap was 2:30.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Pogacar and Slovenia at the start.<\/p>\n

By the start of the \u201cextended dance version\u201d lap with Peage, Mont Kigali and Mur de Kigali, the lead was down to 1:30 and the climbs began to wear down the breakaway\u2019s numbers. Mont Kigali found only Frenchman Julien Bernard out front. He was done for by the peak. Poga\u010dar and Juan Ayuso accelerated over the top and Isaac del Toro joined in.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Pogacar and Ayuso rip it up over the top of Mont Kigali.<\/p>\n

Ayuso couldn\u2019t hang on the Mur de Kigali. Behind the Slovenian and the Mexican UAE-Emirates riders was a chase containing Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d, Jai Hindley, Richard Carapaz and a dozen others, while Evenepoel was in Group 3. The two chase group merged. Italy, Australia and Belgium all tried to yank back the dynamic duo.<\/p>\n

With five laps remaining Evenepoel was frustrated in his desire to get a new machine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Evenepoel was not impressed.<\/p>\n

With 66 km to race, Poga\u010dar went solo. Six kilometres later his gap was a minute over Evenepoel, Hindley, Tom Pidcock, Mattias Skjelmose and Ben Healy. Hindley and Pidcock eventually faded back. Despite its best efforts, the trio couldn\u2019t bring back the Slovenian. The Belgian lit out after Poga\u010dar on his own.<\/p>\n

Skjelmose and Healy battled it out for the podium on the final lap, the Irishman dropping the Dane on C\u00f4te de Kigali Golf. Healy is the first Irishman on the podium since Sean Kelly in 1989.<\/p>\n

Next year\u2019s Worlds are in Montr\u00e9al.<\/p>\n

2025 UCI Road World Championships, Elite Men\u2019s Road Race
Gold) Tadej Poga\u010dar (Slovenian) 6:21:20
Silver) Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) +1:28
Bronze) Ben Healy (Ireland) +2:16<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025 UCI road world championships in Kigali, Rwanda concluded on Sunday with an expected outcome in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[51300,89484,49,48,635,83335,75504,5901,82,11588,1422],"class_list":["post-175781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-2025-uci-road-world-championships","tag-ben-healy","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-laurent-gervais","tag-michael-leonard","tag-remco-evenepoel","tag-sports","tag-spotlight","tag-tadej-pogacar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}