![\"Pidcock\"](\"https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2237889406.jpg\")
<\/p>\n‘It was survival … brutal’: Peloton stunned by cumulative impact of altitude, vert, and the Poga\u010dar-effect in men’s road worlds.<\/p>\n
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(Photo: Zac Williams – Pool\/Getty Images )<\/p>\n
Updated September 29, 2025 06:27AM<\/p>\n
High altitude. Huge climbing. High temperatures. Low air quality. Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Rwandan world championship<\/a> road race was an utter sufferfest for even Tom Pidcock<\/a> and the peloton\u2019s best climbers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the most unenjoyable race of the year,\u201d Pidcock told Eurosport at the finish Sunday. \u201cIt was so hard.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t feel good in the start. Then I was coming round and into the race, and then I just completely blew,\u201d Pidcock said after he chased the winning moves but faded in the crucial fifth hour.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was survival to the finish. There\u2019s not much more to say. It was absolutely brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n Poga\u010dar topped a tiny results sheet Sunday afternoon in Rwanda.<\/p>\n Of 165 starters at the UCI\u2019s marquee world championship road race, only 30 finished.<\/p>\n That\u2019s an 82 percent dropout rate<\/a> that\u2019s not been seen since the Colombian worlds in 1995.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was one of the hardest days of my career, an atrocious ordeal,\u201d Giulio Ciccone said after he led home Italia in sixth.<\/p>\n More than nine minutes separated world champion Poga\u010dar and 10th-place Pidcock at the finish.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a spread that\u2019s more suited to a grand tour, and more than twice that seen at any road worlds in the modern era.<\/p>\n Big vert, bubbling bellies, brutal racing The carnage wasn\u2019t totally unforecasted.<\/p>\n Road race courses touted to pack anywhere between 5,500 and 6,500m of climbing for the men, or 3,000 and 3,500m for the women dominated the narrative all week. A sprinkle of cobbles on the centerpiece Kimihurura climb added a further twist of spice.<\/p>\n Headlines of \u201chardest worlds of the century\u201d duly did the rounds<\/a> in the global cycling media.<\/p>\n Poga\u010dar\u2019s quest for time trial vengeance turned the anticipated pain to 11.<\/p>\n The course and the defending champion weren\u2019t all the men\u2019s peloton had to contend with Sunday.<\/p>\n Images from a TV camera directly next to a roadside porta-potty reinforced rumors that the Euro-centric peloton\u2019s guts were bubbling in the Rwandan unknown. Dozens of riders dashed in to offload.<\/p>\n Remco Evenepoel\u2019s widely publicised pit-stop at 160km to go<\/a> was perhaps a premonition of his mechanical pandemonium to come.<\/a><\/p>\n And after a relatively overcast women\u2019s race Saturday, temperatures reached 30 degrees C on Sunday.<\/p>\n The African sun cooked the peloton to the point that the pit zone started to resemble a field hospital.<\/p>\n Julian Alaphilippe was the first high-profile DNF before dozens more joined the sick and shell-shocked road worlds infirmary.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it was the altitude that influenced us so much as the weather,\u201d Ciccone said. \u201cIt wore us down kilometer by kilometer.\u201d<\/p>\n Not even the former grand tour winners Jai Hindley, Richard Carapaz, and Egan Bernal could stand the suffering.<\/p>\n Elite worlds baptism of fire for French hope Seixas
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Cobbles, climbs, altitude, and smog \u2013 the Rwanda road race was no Sunday club ride. (Photo: Dario Belingheri\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
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Seixas was given a pretty gnarly present for his 19th birthday in being selected for Team France. (Photo: Dario Belingheri\/Getty Images )<\/p>\n