Cyrille Guimard not fan of the new World Championship concept: "It blurs the message in my opinion"

The first edition of the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships takes place from August 3 to 13 in Glasgow. On the program over the 11 days of competition: 13 separate UCI World Championships and more than 2,600 athletes to win the 200 rainbow jerseys. Cyrille Guimard gives his opinion on this new concept as well as brief look at some of the favourites in his column for Cyclism'Actu.

"I don't have the feeling that there will be the World Championships next Sunday. In addition, it's a new particular formula, somewhere we are trying to make mini Olympic Games for Worlds. All that blurs the message in my opinion. There are traditions, dates... here we are changing and upsetting everything, I'm not sure that all that is very profitable. I'm not too much for change on these things. Otherwise, it's going to be a demanding course. Which riders will have recovered the best from the Tour de France, who will have recovered, while not losing their level of performance? And in terms of psychological, did the riders really stay in it?"

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"Everything will depend on Belgium, with Remco Evenepoel and Wout Van Aert. They will be difficult to beat. But there are equals, diverging interests, disputes... Either you have an indisputable leader, or you have a two-headed sheep and it starts to get more complicated, especially since Evenepoel has already been World Champion, whereas Van Aert has not."

"The French team must run as it ran for 3-4 years, it has relied on Belgium. Julian Alaphilippe did a laborious Tour de France, he tried a lot, but he was never really at his best. serenity, freshness, confidence. If he has recovered well over the past two weeks, it will be in his head that it will play in his cards. Christophe Laporte comes out of a good Tour de France, he has proven the last year by finishing 2nd that he could race at this level."

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Final startlist World Championships Men's Elite Road Race with Pogacar, Evenepoel, van Aert, van der Poel, Philipsen, Alaphilippe and Pedersen