State of the nation - Analysing Belgium's all-star 2024 World Championships team

Remco Evenepoel has remained in Switzerland between the World Championships time trial and road race, and as he planned his schedule, he briefly considered taking in a long midweek training ride to Saint Moritz in the company of Victor Campenaerts.

Their idea was to pay homage to Johan Museeuw’s oft-mythologised outing ahead of the Lugano Worlds in 1996, when he bumped into Laurent Jalabert early in a session and wound up accompanying the Frenchman on an impromptu nine-hour ride, with ONCE manager Manolo Saiz parping the horn behind them to signal their interval efforts. Four days later, Museeuw claimed an unexpected world title on the demanding Lugano course.

This, as José Mourinho would put it, is cycling heritage, and few countries possess quite as much of it as Belgium. Indeed, when it comes to the World Championships road race, nobody has a history like Belgium, who have claimed a record 27 elite men’s titles as well as seven elite women’s rainbow jerseys.

Evenepoel opted for a different training route on Wednesday once he realised a ride to Saint Moritz would have made for a 360km round trip, settling for a six-hour ride with Campenaerts and Laurens De Plus. No matter, he finds himself rather closer to his own piece of cycling history in his season of doubles.

In Paris this summer, Evenepoel became the first male rider to win the road race and time trial at the Olympic Games. In Zurich last Sunday, he became the first male rider to win the world and Olympic time trial in the same year. And this weekend, he can become the first elite male rider to win the time trial and road race at the same Worlds.

On Saturday, meanwhile, Lotte Kopecky will defend her title in the elite women’s road race.  Small wonder, then, that the Belgian press pack dwarfs all others at these Worlds thus far, with every movement to and from the Hotel Swiss Star in Wetzikon splashed across the websites of the country’s main daily newspapers.

Evenepoel is central to everything as he faces his first elite Worlds road race as the outright and only leader of the Belgian men’s team. On his debut in Yorkshire in 2019, he served as a super domestique, desperately trying to pace Philippe Gilbert back into contention after his crash. In the years since, his ambitions have interlocked – and occasionally competed – with those of Wout van Aert.

Their coexistence was tense in Leuven in 2021, with the fall-out generating a winter’s worth of newspaper columns in Flanders. The tandem proved altogether more successful in Wollongong the following year, however, when Van Aert was the ideal foil for the long-range effort that secured the title for Evenepoel. They combined smoothly at the Paris Olympics, too, with Van Aert marking his old sparring partner Mathieu van der Poel before Evenepoel took flight for his winning move.

Van Aert misses the Zurich Worlds due to the injury he sustained at the Vuelta a España, and although his absence makes Belgium’s leadership hierarchy clear from the outset, it’s hardly a blessing for Evenepoel. The presence of a Van Aert in his scintillating Vuelta form would have given Evenepoel a vital card to play against favourite Tadej Pogacar and defending champion Mathieu van der Poel, and it would have kept all of Belgium’s rivals guessing about their approach.

Instead, Sven Vanthourenhout’s squad will build their race squarely around Evenepoel. There isn’t an obvious Plan B, at least against a rider like Pogačar on a course as demanding as this. Campenaerts, De Plus, Tim Wellens, Jasper Stuyven, Maxim Van Gils, Tiesj Benoot and Quinten Hermans will line out with serving Evenepoel as the summit of their ambitions here.

The Worlds road race can take on a life of its own, and Belgian hierarchies can be upturned – witness Benoni Beheyt and Rik van Looy in 1963, or Eddy Merckx and Freddy Maertens a decade later – but none of Evenepoel’s entourage are under any illusions about their roles here.

The consensus from Belgium – and in many places beyond – is that the Zurich Worlds will prove to be a duel between Evenepoel and Pogačar, as Wellens suggested to Het Laatste Nieuws. "At a certain moment, only one of us might be able to follow Tadej, and that’s Remco," he said.

Kopecky

The situation is strikingly similar for the women’s road race, where defending champion Lotte Kopecky is the outright leader and where many, in Belgium at least, are billing Saturday as a duel between their rider and her (soon-to-be-ex) SD Worx teammate Demi Vollering (Netherlands).

In Glasgow last year, Kopecky became Belgium’s first elite women’s world champion in five decades, following Nicole Vandenbroeck’s 1973 triumph on the roll of honour, and it’s difficult to overstate the impact she has had in her home country. Wherever Kopecky races in the rainbow bands, the Belgian press now follows.

Evenepoel and Van Aert remain Belgian cycling’s most bankable stars, their every move carefully chronicled, parsed and analysed, but a cursory survey of news sites in the country over the past year demonstrates clearly how Kopecky is drawing hitherto unprecedented levels of attention on women’s cycling from her home media.

Kopecky is also adding new quivers to her bow, with her climbing and time trialling both seeming to improve with each passing week. She placed second overall at the Giro d’Italia Women in July and she warmed up for these World Championships by beating Vollering to win the Tour de Romandie before powering to victory in the time trial at the European Championships.

Although Kopecky endured, by her own admission, an off-day in the Worlds time trial last weekend, she still managed fifth place. That performance shouldn’t unduly dent her confidence ahead of this Saturday’s road race, where she will be supported by Lotte Claes, Valerie Demey, Lore De Schepper, Julie De Wilde, Justine Ghekiere, Julie Van De Velde and Margot Vanpachtenbeke.

On Wednesday, Kopecky was one of the invited guests at the UCI junior conference. When the floor was opened to questions, she was inevitably asked her predictions for the weekend’s main events. "I think Tadej Pogačar, but I hope for Remco," Kopecky said when asked to predict the men’s race. Asked for the winner of the women’s race, she smiled: "Then I’ll say my own name."

Pogačar and Vollering are formidable foes, but Belgium will race with confidence in Zurich this weekend. Heritage and current form has it so.