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September 29, 2024
31st World Championships 2024 ME – Road Race 🇨🇭 (WC) – Winterthur – Zürich : 273,9 km
The 2024 UCI Road World Championships will be the 97th edition of the UCI Road World Championships,
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September 29, 2024
31st World Championships 2024 ME – Road Race 🇨🇭 (WC) – Winterthur – Zürich : 273,9 km
The 2024 UCI Road World Championships will be the 97th edition of the UCI Road World Championships, the annual world championships for road bicycle racing. It will be held between 22 and 29 September 2024 in Zurich, Switzerland. It will be held alongside the UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships. A total of thirteen events were held, consisting of six road races, six individual time trials and a team time trial mixed relay (all of them finishing in Zurich in front of Sechseläutenplatz).
The 2024 UCI Road World Championships witnessed history in the making on Sunday as Tadej Pogačar became the first rider in 37 years to follow up this season’s victories in the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France with a gold medal and the rainbow jersey in the elite men’s road race.
The Slovenian claimed cycling’s Triple Crown in devastating style, breaking away from the main peloton with 100 kilometres to go, blasting through a 16-rider move then going solo some 50 kilometres from the line.
Pogačar looked briefly to be in trouble as his gap dipped below 40 seconds on the final lap, but he still remained clear for Slovenia’s first ever road race gold medal, his 23rd win of the 2024 season, and another giant step towards becoming a legend of the sport.
The silver medal went to late attacker Ben O’Connor (Australia), crossing the line 31 seconds behind, with defending champion Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) then claiming the bronze.
But in one of the most stunning World Championships rides in the race’s history, the day in cycling, the year and perhaps even the decade all belonged to Pogačar.
“I cannot believe what just happened, after this kind of season, I put a lot of pressure on myself for today. I had pressure from myself, from the team, we came here for the victory.
“The race unfolded pretty quick and there was a dangerous break in the front, I maybe did a stupid attack, luckily Jan [Tratnik] was there with me and I never gave up until the final. It’s an incredible day, I can’t believe what happened.”
Pogačar confirmed that his attack at 100 kilometres to go, an enormous distance even by the Slovenian’s standards, had not been planned.
“Of course,it was not planned. We had planned to keep race under control but the race went quite early and I don’t know what I was thinking and I just went also, I went with the flow and luckily I made it, but it was so tough.”
“For sure I wanted this title, after many years fighting for the Tour de France and other races, I never had a World Championships as a pure goal, and this year everything went smoothly already.
“After a perfect season, this was a big goal to win the World Championships and I can’t believe it happened, I have to thank the whole team, without them it would not have been possible and I’m super proud of the national team.”
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