Two-time US junior road champion Enzo Hincapie got his first in-person scrutiny of the leg-burning, uphill finish that features in two days for the men's junior road race at the Road World Championships in Montreal.
On Tuesday, he only had to climb it once to conclude the 20.3km junior time trial, but the final 600 metres left no space for him to claw back time for a medal.
His debut at a time trial event at a World Championships was a learning experience, he said, and he'll recalibrate his brain and his legs for a major climbing day on Thursday, where the 134km road race brings 2,690 metres of elevation gain. He'll have to address the long, 4% gradient of Avenue du Parc 10 times on Thursday, but he didn't want to think about it now.
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"[Today was] a pretty long 26 minutes, probably the longest 600 metres of my life from that [final] corner to the finish. So I'm glad that's over," the 18-year-old rider from South Carolina told Cyclingnews and Cycling Weekly after his finish, still trying to physically and mentally assess his ride.
"I really try not to look up [at the uphill finish]. I just wanted to not see how far it was, and just see how hard I could go to the finish and not think about where it really was."
Once stopping the clock at the top of Avenue de Parc, Hincapie was not near a medal that he had hoped to earn. Benjamín Noval Suárez of Spain won the rainbow jersey in a time of 25:17, disposing of race favourite Vic De Smet (Belgium) by six seconds. Hincapie finished 12th, 55 seconds off the pace, with US teammate Kashus Adamski less than one second back in 13th.
"Definitely, the first part felt a bit more sneaky than I thought. To be honest, you don't really feel the effort because you have the race adrenaline, and then you get to kind of coast for a bit in the corners. So maybe I went a bit hard there, and it kind of caught up to me towards the end. But yeah, you live, and you learn.
"I obviously wanted to fight for a medal in the time trial, but the legs weren't there at all today. I'm not really gonna let that bring me down. Just have one more race to go, and that's my main target," he confirmed.
Hincapie raced in Kigali's junior road race in 2025, but was outside the top 50 at that race. This time, with little travel and terrain similar to his home in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, the US champion has higher expectations.
Across his first season with the German-based Grenke-Auto Eder, a development team for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Hincapie has excelled in long, one-day races. He was second at Gran Premi Les Franqueses in Spain, which was 138km with hilly circuits, that closely resembles the Worlds course. He also took top-10s at Paris-Roubaix and E3 Saxo junior races.
At this Road World Championships, the shortest turnaround among the 13 races is the two men's junior events, with just two days between the time trial and the road race. Even though Enzo Hincapie hasn't raced the famous Mont Royal circuit, he's seen it on television many times while watching the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, a race where his father, George Hincapie, competed in the first two editions, 2010 and 2011.
"We always watch it, you know, with my family every year. My dad did that race a few times back in his career, so he's told me some stuff about it. I'm looking forward to it.
"It's all about being in the right position and hitting the climbs in a good spot. I don't think you should really be sleeping at all at any point in that race," he noted about the road circuit approaching.
"I mean, it's going to be a long race, a lot of times of the climb. So you just got to keep fighting."
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