ANALYSIS | 3 reasons why Remco Evenepoel, not Tadej Pogacar, is favourite for Kigali Worlds time trial

This Sunday, 21 September, the time trial at the 2025 World Championships in Kigali takes place, with Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogacar standing out as the clear favourites. Filippo Ganna, the dominant force in the discipline over the past five years, has opted out due to the demanding nature of the course.

Let us say from the outset: the UCI should not be designing mountainous routes for World Championship time trials. Time trial specialists already face dwindling opportunities in Grand Tours and one-week races, and now they are being forced to skip the Worlds because the parcours favours climbers rather than true rouleurs.

The Rwanda course totals 40.6 kilometres, relentlessly undulating with constant rises and descents, and only the opening seven kilometres are reasonably flat. Yet despite the chatter around the difficulty, we believe Evenepoel goes in as favourite ahead of Pogacar to reclaim the rainbow jersey.

Here are three reasons why:

Remco Evenepoel is far more of a time trial specialist than Tadej Pogacar who, while undeniably strong against the clock, has never dedicated himself to the discipline in the same way. A rider who, through sheer power and wattage, can beat a monster like Filippo Ganna on the flat has nothing to fear.

This season, Remco has already beaten Pogacar in the Dauphiné and Tour de France time trials, while also winning nearly every other TT he has entered — including Romandie and the Belgian Nationals. The only exception came on the brutal uphill test to Peyragudes, far harder than Kigali’s course, after which he abandoned the Tour due to illness. Last year he pulled off the rare double of Worlds and European gold. Enough said.

Much is made of Pogacar’s ability to win whenever he targets a race, but the claim doesn’t always hold. He has yet to crack Milano–Sanremo and at Paris–Roubaix he couldn’t better a more natural specialist in Mathieu van der Poel. Pogacar has prepared for Kigali, yes, but not with the laser focus of Evenepoel, who has made this TT his number one objective.

The Slovenian’s primary target is the road race, and he also has Lombardia circled later in the season. Evenepoel, meanwhile, has spent ten days in Calpe fine-tuning specifically for this Sunday’s effort. He will, of course, also fight for victory in the road race on the 28th, but the time trial has been his main goal all along.

Finally, the parcours. It is certainly tough, though the climbing is not outrageous — 680 metres in total. The opening seven flat kilometres play directly to Evenepoel’s strengths, while the first two climbs are more rolling drags than real mountains (2.5 km at 5.8% and 6.6 km at 3.5% for the twin ascents to Nyanza). Later, the Peage climb at 2 km and 6% is hardly devastating.

The final cobbled ramp of 1.3 km at 6.3% may pose problems for Remco, but between the climbs there is plenty of downhill, none of it especially technical, where his power should come to the fore.

In short: of course Tadej Pogacar could win gold — he usually can. But the weight of evidence points to Remco Evenepoel as the man most likely to once again take the rainbow jersey in the Kigali 2025 World Championships time trial.