When not even a late crash could stop Matej Mohorič (Slovenia) from blasting to a solo victory in the 2023 Gravel World Championships ahead of Florian Vermeersch (Belgium) and Connor Swift (Great Britain), it rounded off a stunning second half of the season that had already seen Mohorič win a third stage of the Tour de France, the Tour de Pologne overall and stages of the Renewi Tour and CRO Race. That summer and autumn, it seemed he couldn't stop raising his arms in the air.
This time around, it's a very different story.
For Mohorič, the Gravel Worlds Championships is the last chance saloon to try and salvage something from his near-disastrous 2025 season. Or as the Bahrain Victorious racer told Wielerflits recently, "I even hit my best form ever a few times this year, but then something always went terribly wrong."
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"It's probably my worst season ever in terms of results."
After riding the Gravel World Championships, Mohorič will take part in the Japan Cup on Saturday, October 18, to pull down the curtain on his racing year. But it's on Sunday in Limburg that he's hoping to hit the jackpot.
"It's an important goal for me. I'm probably one of the favorites. Maybe not the favorite, but I think I can compete for a good result," Mohorič said.
Looking back on a winless year - something that he only previously suffered once in the last decade, during the pandemic-struck season of 2020 - Mohorič said that whenever he found himself taking a couple of steps forward in 2025, he then found himself taking two steps back. The main highlights were a third place in the last stage of the Tour de France and a fifth place in the GP de Québec - meagre takings for a racer of his stature.
"I started well in the Tour de la Provence," - where he finished second overall - "and those first races, but then I got sick twice. I probably pushed my body too hard in the winter to take an extra step in preparing for the Classics," he explained.
"But yeah, that didn't really pay off, and what followed was my worst Classics campaign so far.
"After the Classics, I tried to pull myself together, take some rest, and start again. That's where I found really good form again. Actually, I even hit my best form ever a few times this year, but then something always went terribly wrong."
Problems with his bike on the breakaway stage 20 of the Tour de France, a day he'd earmarked as a goal, were followed by a promising top three in Paris around the Montmartre circuit. However, so far, there hasn't been a truly standout result.
Hence the interest in trying to reverse the 2025 trend in the Gravel Worlds, although he's not been able to recon the course and will be riding, he says, on intuition - something he often does, so he's not overly troubled by that.
Likewise, he's trying to put a positive spin on what has already been a very long season, which started way back in late January with two Spanish one-day races and will only end with the very last race of the road calendar, the Japan Cup.
"It's challenging," he told Wielerflits, "but we'll see."
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