The highway races on the UCI Highway World Championships 2024 in Zürich mark the top of the occasions in Switzerland, with the boys’s elite highway race bringing down the curtain on Sunday 29 September.
Each are over severely hilly, however not mountainous, programs that end within the centre of Zürich, the largest metropolis in Switzerland, with Mathieu van der Poel of the Netherlands and Lotte Kopecky of Belgium trying to defend their titles.
The junior males’s and ladies’s and under-23 males race in direction of the top of this week too, with these all being on shorter variations of the elite girls’s course.
The 2024 Worlds is the primary to mix the Highway Worlds and the Para-cycling Worlds in the identical occasion, with the para-cycling highway races taking place all through the week.
Ladies’s elite highway race
(Picture credit score: UCI/2024 Highway World Championships)
154.1km, Saturday 28 September, 12:45pm GMT
Whereas the boys’s race is the longest in a technology, the ladies’s elite race takes place over 154.1km, a reasonably typical distance, with 2,400m of elevation. It begins in Uster, the third-largest city within the canton of Zürich, with a 25km lap of the Greifensee earlier than it too joins that circuit round Zürich itself.
Earlier than becoming a member of the identical Zürich metropolis circuit as the boys, the ladies will tackle the climb of Binz, 1.5km at 9.3%. There then follows 4 laps of that loop round Zürich. There are two vital climbs on the circuit: the Zürichbergstrasse, a mean of 8% over 1.1km, with a most of 15%, after which the Witikon, 2.3km at 5.7% with a max of 9%, so there can be many weary legs.
The most recent race content material, interviews, options, opinions and professional shopping for guides, direct to your inbox!
There are technical sections all through, together with a prolonged 3km descent via the forest to the south. Regardless of much less distance and elevation to the boys, it looks as if the right course for a solo breakaway or a small group dash.
Males’s elite highway race
(Picture credit score: UCI/2024 Highway World Championships)
273.9km, Sunday 29 September, 10:30am GMT
Again in its traditional headline slot on the ultimate Sunday of the World Championships, the elite males’s highway race on the Zürich occasion is the longest in 36 years, since Ronse in Belgium performed host to the race for the rainbow bands in 1988. At 273.9km lengthy, with 4,470m of climbing, this can be a severely powerful race, the hilliest since Innsbruck in 2018, which was gained by Alejandro Valverde.
The race doesn’t start in Zürich itself, however within the wider Canton, within the metropolis of Winterthur, the sixth-biggest metropolis in Switzerland, and residential of Albert Büchi, third on the 1931 Worlds. Consisting of two important components, the race makes use of a loop out of Winterthur, over the Buch am Irchel, 4.8km at 4.2%, and taking up the Kyburg – 1.3km at 10.1% – after which the Suessblatz – 1.7km at 8.5% – earlier than heading into the principle circuit, across the metropolis of Zürich, which can be tackled seven instances in all. From 85.9km to the end, the peloton can be heading around the Zürich circuit, which is 26.9km every time spherical, with 501m of elevation. It’s not flat, with the Zürichbergstrasse and the Wikiton tackled seven instances every.
The seven loops will showcase Switzerland’s largest metropolis, the guts of the Protestant Reformation within the sixteenth century, and near the Glarner Alps, and will definitely require a big dose of Protestant work ethic. By the point the race finishes within the Sechseläutenplatz, Zürich’s largest sq., many could have fallen by the wayside. It’s a route which screams Tadej Pogačar or Remco Evenepoel, the 2 most up-to-date winners of Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Junior and U23 highway races
(Picture credit score: UCI)
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Occasion
Date
Time
Junior girls
26 September
10:00am
Junior males
26 September
14:15pm
U23 males
27 September
12:45pm
The ladies’s junior highway race is a miniature model of the ladies’s elite race, with one lap of the Greifensee from Uster main into one lap of the Metropolis Circuit, with its climbs of the Zürichbergstrasse and the Wikiton. It’s going to imply 73.6km with 972m of elevation throughout the race.
The boys’s race is identical route, simply with extra laps of the Metropolis Circuit – three as a substitute of 1 – that means 127.2km with 1,913m of climbing. The under-23 males do precisely the identical however with yet another lap, bringing the gap to 173.6km and the climbing to 2,483m, so it turns into much more of a course for climbers quite than puncheurs. The under-23 girls’s races, TT and RR, happen similtaneously the elite variations.
Para-cycling highway races
(Picture credit score: UCI)
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Occasion
Date
Time
Males H1-2
26 September
9:00am
Ladies H1-5
26 September
9:00am
Males C4-5
26 September
12:15pm
Males C3
26 September
12:15pm
Males C1-2
27 September
8:30am
Males T1-2
27 September
11:00am
Ladies T1-2
27 September
11:00am
Males H3
28 September
8:15am
Ladies C1-5
28 September
10:45am
Males H4-5
29 September
9:45am
Para-cycling athletes get their very own loop on their respective highway races, the Lakeside Circuit, a 6.2km lap of south Zürich which, you’ve guessed it, runs alongside Lake Zürich. Many of the occasions nonetheless soak up a minimum of one lap of the Metropolis Circuit, so riders must take within the Zürichbergstrasse and the Witikon, however then all occasions settle into the Lakeside Circuit. This loop incorporates the Kreuzstrasse, a small punchy climb initially of every time spherical.
The boys’s B is 103.2km lengthy, with two laps of the Metropolis Circuit and eight laps of Lakeside; the ladies’s B is 84.7km lengthy with two laps of Metropolis, and 5 of Lakeside; the boys’s H1-2 and ladies’s H1-5 is 38km lengthy, made up of six laps of Lakeside; the boys’s C4-5 is 90.9km lengthy, with one lap of Metropolis and 6 of Lakeside; the boys’s C3 is 71.6km lengthy with one lap of Metropolis and three of Lakeside; the boys’s C1 and C2 is 10 laps of Lakeside; the boys’s and ladies’s T1-2 is 5 laps of Lakeside; the boys’s H3 is one Metropolis lap and 5 Lakeside; the ladies’s C1-3 is 9 of Lakeside; the ladies’s C4-5 is considered one of Metropolis and 7 of Lakeside; and eventually, the boys’s H4 and H5 is one lap of the Metropolis Circuit and 5 laps of Lakeside.
