The routes for the 2024 Highway World Championships in Zurich had been revealed on the ultimate weekend of the Glasgow ‘tremendous Worlds’ earlier than Lotte Kopecky took victory within the ladies’s highway race with Switzerland set to host the world’s finest riders from September 21 to 29.
Zurich hosts the finale of the headline occasions, with the boys’s highway race beginning northwest of the town in Winterthur and the ladies’s to the east in Uster. The routes include a equally punchy ending circuit of Zurich’s metropolis centre to Glasgow, however with out as many corners and they’re 279.2km and 157.6km in size respectively.
Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel and Wout Van Aert are amongst these within the early dialogue for being finest suited to the brutal parcours.
The route into Zurich regularly undulates, with the Kyburg (1.2km at 12%) as the toughest early punch within the males’s and Binz (4.6km at 4.5%) the early take a look at within the ladies’s, earlier than the Zürichbergstrasse (1.1km at 8%) and Witikon (2.3km at 5.7%) line every of the circuits and can resolve the race.
Breaking information: The altitude profiles of the racecourses for the 2024 UCI Highway and Para-cycling Highway World Championships Zurich have been revealed. Try what will probably be in retailer for the world’s finest cyclists and para-cyclists.https://t.co/1YMAAiFufL#TogetherWeRide #Zurich2024August 14, 2023
Swiss stars Stefan Küng and Stefan Bisseger had been on the presentation after competing in Glasgow and Stirling to evaluate the course. Küng was wonderful on this yr’s highway race ending fifth behind solely Mathieu Van der Poel, Van Aert, Pogačar and Mads Pedersen.
“With the 2 climbs within the highway race circuit, there will probably be motion within the races. They are going to be open and thrilling,” Küng stated. “The races will certainly be troublesome,” added Bisseger.
The circuit itself is 27km lengthy and will probably be tackled 4 instances within the ladies’s race and 7 instances within the males’s, amounting to an especially troublesome day which ought to breed equally thrilling races to the 2022 World Championships for the best Classics riders on the earth to battle it out.
Kopecky and Mathieu van der Poel will arrive at Zurich 2024 because the defending champions, after each successful solo in two of probably the most thrilling races of the yr in Glasgow.
Time Trials
Each the elite particular person time trials end on the Sechseläutenplatz in Zurich after a 30km route for the ladies and 46.3km for the boys. The ultimate few kilometres run alongside the picturesque Lake Zurich.
The lads’s route is especially flat for the opening 20km earlier than 4 hills of various issue are met in the midst of the course forward of the flat run into Zurich. The ladies will face a special problem with solely 5 kilometres of flat highway from the beginning in Gossau ZH earlier than the identical 4 hills are tackled earlier than the flat finale.
Newly topped males’s ITT World Champion, Remco Evenepoel will seemingly be the favorite to defend his rainbow jersey on this course which arguably fits him even higher than the Stirling route.
The ladies’s subject will probably be led by the now two-time ITT World Champion Chloé Dygert as she seems to be to win a 3rd title on a really troublesome course.
UCI President David Lappartient was on the announcement of the routes in Glasgow. “Zurich and the encircling hills have a protracted historical past in biking and would be the scene of nice races,” he stated in his welcome deal with.
Zurich 2024 sees the World Championships return to its regular place on the calendar in September, giving Van der Poel, Kopekcy, Evenepoel and Dygert abnormally lengthy stints of their respective rainbow jerseys.
Alongside the elite occasions may also be the junior, u23 and para highway biking occasions.