The UAE Team Emirates-XRG team bus is easy to spot at this year’s Tour de Pologne, with local fans gathering outside in huge numbers to cheer on local hero and UAE stalwart Rafał Majka one last time before the Polish star climber hangs up his wheels at the end of this season.
If Majka is logically the centre of attention for autograph hunters and local media and getting the biggest cheers whenever he signs on, the other riders in the squad are enjoying the support they’re all getting, too.
“It’s nice to be with the ‘mayor of the city’,” Brandon McNulty, returning to racing after a spell away following the Giro d’Italia, told Cyclingnews with a grin at the stage 1 start at Wroclaw. “It’s fun ’cause it’s his last one and it’s nice to be part of that.”
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While Majka will likely have his eye on the punchier stages like Tuesday’s uphill finish in Karpacz, where he won two years ago, McNulty and young teammate Jan Christen represent the GC options for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, with the rider from Phoenix, Arizona having his eye on next Sunday’s final time trial in particular.
McNulty’s also got his second half of the season fully in place, with a ride in the Maryland Cycling Classic in Baltimore with the US National Squad on September 6 one date he’s already got planned.
McNulty will follow the wheeltracks of Matteo Jorgenson, who raced with the national team in Maryland back in 2023, rather than with his trade squad. McNulty was last seen racing in the US back in the 2024 USPro Road Nationals, where he won the individual time trial for a second time and was second in the road race, so the Maryland event represents a rare chance for local fans to see the 30-year-old from Arizona riding on home soil.
That does mean he won’t be back at the Vuelta a España, despite taking the opening time trial in Lisbon last year and wearing the red leader’s jersey for a day. But as McNulty said, “That was never part of the plan, all the way back since December”.
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“If they call me, I’ll go. But the plan is I do Hamburg, the Deutschland Tour, then Maryland with the national team and then Canada [Grand Prix races in Québec and Montréal], with Croatia” – a race he won last year overall as well as taking a stage – “as the end of the year.”
First though, is Pologne, where McNulty says the variety of different build-ups for riders makes it exceptionally hard to predict, particularly as, to quote Majka, the course is designed to be like seven days of Classics.
“Inevitably some riders have been racing, others are coming in now from the Tour, every day is up and down, too, and it’s super punchy. But I think it’ll be a nice race.”
McNulty finished safely in the main pack on stage 1 from Wroclaw to Legnica, in 48th place. His biggest target is at the opposite end of the race, the 12-kilometre time trial outside the Wieliczka salt mine near Krakow.
“I’ll need a few days to get into it, tomorrow [Tuesday] is hard,” McNulty said. “Hopefully we’ll look at the GC but for sure the time trial at the end of the week will be a nice goal.”
He’s had a similar route map back in 2023, completing the Giro then doing the US Nationals before heading to Pologne. This year the nationals were not possible because they took place during the Giro – “great planning” was his one, somewhat wry, comment on that – but his form, he said, is promising.
“I think maybe we’ll find out today, it’s different every year, I took one week after the Giro easy and I felt pretty good actually, I had a good summer at home training and I’m excited to get back into it.”