The biggest nations and some leading contenders for Sunday’s men’s road race have expressed serious concerns about the Glasgow Road World Championships course.
Most riders carried a reconnaissance ride on Friday and then watched the junior men and junior women races on Saturday to understand the key points of the 14.3km circuit.
Fortunately, the weather forecasts have improved in the last 24 hours with rain no longer expected on Sunday but the riders’ concerns about safety remain.
Matteo Trentin, the leader of the Italian team joked that all the twists and turns left him with a headache, while in private riders had more serious concerns about some of the off-camber corners, sand on the road from leaking sandbags and lack of protection where crashes are likely to occur.
“They’ve managed to make it even more technical than 2018 and I didn’t think that was possible,” Trentin, who won the European Championships on a similar course in 2018, told La Gazzetta dello Sport.
“The route map doesn’t show how hard it really is. You’re always going in and coming out of corners. It gives you a headache, it’s a cyclocross race on the road, with no chance to stop for a pee. If you have a puncture or even worse a crash, you’ll need a lap to get back on.”
"The course reminds me of a city criterium," Belgium’s Jasper Philipsen said.
He rode five criteriums after the Tour de France but joked he should have done more to prepare for the Glasgow circuit.
The 271.1km elite men’s road race starts in Edinburgh and covers a 120 km sector in the Scottish countryside to reach Glasgow. The elite men then cover ten laps of the 14.3km circuit, with a total of 3,570 metres of climbing.
The city centre circuit twists and turns, climbs and descends through the streets westwards towards Kelvingrove Parks and then returns to the city centre for the short but steep climb of Montrose Street (200 metres at 8.5%) just 11.5km from the finish.
There are so many corners on the circuit that nobody can agree on the exact number. Some teams said 44, 45 or even 48. Whatever the true number, the riders will face almost 500 corners in the final 150km of the race.
“After two laps of the recon ride, I had no idea where the climb was," Julian Alaphilippe admitted to L’Equipe. “I was disoriented and Sunday with the public, it will be worse.”
Benoît Cosnefroy appears to have a love-hate relationship with the course.
“The person who designed this course has problems. They were perhaps drunk and nobody told them they’ve gone too far with the craziness,” he suggested, yet he changed his mind after his own recon ride.
“I love this course, it suits how I like to race, it’s great for the puncheurs.”
Florian Sénéchal was not so amused.
“It's dangerous for a Worlds. I would have thought they would be more serious about safety. I like a race when it's technical but in terms of respect for the riders, it's not great,” he said.
Valentin Madouas suggested the best riders will have to make 80 major efforts of 15-20 seconds on the ten Glasgow circuits. The last perhaps comes on the final climb of Montrose Street, when someone attacks to try to win alone.
“It's very, very hard, harder than I thought, and harder than in Leuven in 2021,” Madouas said.
Mathieu van der Poel impressed television crews and lit up social media when he tested his legs with a long acceleration on the key climb on Friday.
Like Wout van Aert, the cyclocross world champion arguably has the bike skills and acceleration to emerge on the Glasgow course.
"The bodies are going to fall out of the closet," he said, using a Dutch phrase to highlight how the course will reveal who is really on form.
"It's something we don't often experience, it’s a criterium with a Worlds distance: it will be an exhausting battle."
