Key events
Alaphilippe out with dislocated shoulder
210km to go: The French have lost their leader, the 2021 World Championships. The crash hasn’t been shown on TV.
218km to go: There’s a crash at the side of the road. Pello Bilbao, of Spain, one of their leading contenders, comes down, waves his teammates on. That didn’t look too good.
220km to go: Reminder: there’s no race radios in the worlds. Primoz Roglic just stopped for a call of nature, and with no teammate near him. Presumably, someone knows where he’s got to.
225km to go: A tough climbing section, with attendant cowbells and that asks questions of the breakaway. Simon Geshke (Germany), Markus Pajur (Estonia)
and Roberto Gonzales (Panama) are in there, though Pajur really struggled to get on, and fails to do so. He and Gonzales are off the back, with still a great deal of the road back to the main group. Geshke is riding in his last ever worlds.
235km to go: We’ve completed a circuit. There’s plenty of ups and down in this race, and still so long to go. Anyone committing at this point must feel they are in the form of their life or is being used up by the big guns. It’s Silvan Dillier (Switzerland), Tobias Foss (Norway), Rui Oliveira (Portugal), Piotr Pekala (Poland), Luc Wirtgen (Luxembourg), with 13 seconds back to chasers and 1’ 21” back to the peloton.
245km to go: Into open country, and through some farmland and, yes, Swiss cottages. It’s a Norwegian and an Ecuadorian, Jonathan Caicedo. The Vatican City entrant is being spat well out the back, and needs snookers – and prayers – to finish. But here comes a serious move, and it includes Bardet, and two Belgians. Three Americans, too. The gentleman from Belize, Cory Williams, who we saw go off, is now struggling badly. It’s a large group. With Jan Tratnik of Slovenia in there. Belgium and Slovenia – the teams of the big players – are marking out their territory.
255 km to go: Poland, Portugal, USA and Latvia are the early break. The Qatari rider is way off the back; with the big boys now. The peloton behind them is huge. Then, when that drops back, another trio goes away. We’ve already seen Roman Bardet and Mikel Landa to the fore and nobody is being allowed to go – just yet. Estonia, a member of the refugee team – and Belize? Venezuela on the chase. It’s the United colours of Benetton in these early stages.
265km to go: The peloton makes its way down to Zurich through Schaffhausen. Lovely morning son, and fresh air too. The freshest it gets, Swiss air. In Europe, that is. Sad to say that the Honduran rider, Fredd Matute, who is 38, is out the back already. Long way to go, Fredd. Up at the front, no real pattern, though an American rider, Larry Warbasse is up in the vanguard.
And away we go…..
273km to go: It’s Poland who go on the attack first…
There’s just under 5km to the real start. Plenty of chat between the riders. The skies feature smatters of blue, far better than what came earlier this week. The Rhine Falls is passed – not to be confused with the Reichenbach Falls? They are zipping along in this virtual start, warming up the legs.
On the start line, the Swiss team take central stage as remembrance is paid, a moment of silence for Muriel Furrer. Her family have said they want the race to go ahead.
Here’s what the course will look like.
“Every time you have to start from zero,” says Remco Evenepoel, looking to add this to his time trial rainbow jersey. And Olympic gold. “All types of riders can win it.”
“Today’s going to be a hard and long race,” says Pogacar, who has been on a recce of the course with Matt Stephens. “It’s good to have him as a teammate,” Pog says of Primoz Roglic, fellow Slovenian. Between them, they won all three Grand Tours. It seems he plans to attack on the steepest section and that comes after the finish line of the circuit. How many laps out will he go for it?
Preamble
Zurich has hosted an event that should not be remembered for the winner of its races. Instead, all thoughts might concentrate on the sad loss of Swiss rider Muriel Furrer, 18, who died after the women’s junior race. One of the cruelties of sport is that the show always goes on, though perhaps the departed want it that way, too. After Saturday’s thriller, with Lotte Kopecky winning the women’s race, and Friday, and when Niklas Behrens won the under-23 men’s road race, the course is familiar, though the weather might be better than much of the week. The contenders? Tadej Pogacar leads the list, of course. Can Remco Evenepoel, the Olympic Gold, put the pressure down? There’s Matthieu van der Poel, the defending champion. Let’s see, even if who actually wins cannot compete with the loss already suffered.