Road to Yorkshire: How best to prepare for the World Championships

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Vuelta, Tour of Britain or Canada? The plusses and minuses
The differing roads to Worlds success
Five 2019 favourites' routes to the Worlds road race

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France's Julian Alaphilippe will start the 2019 World Championships as one of the favourites for the elite men's road race(Image credit: Getty Images Sport)

Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico? The Critérium du Dauphiné or the Tour de Suisse? There's rarely one right answer to what the best path is to success at the spring Classics or the Tour de France. And that's very much the case when it comes to the best route to World Championships road-race success, too.

This year's varied course in Yorkshire, in which the weather is being predicted to have a strong influence on the final outcome, makes it one of the more difficult to call in recent years in terms of a possible winner. A technical 'Classics-style' course seems to broadly cover it, with the 'power climbs' along the way suggesting that it's not going to be the domain of the out-and-out sprinter. We could see a genuine surprise winner.

Ten years ago, road race world champion Cadel Evans, of Australia approached the championships in Mendrisio, Switzerland, via the tried-and-trusted Vuelta route, where he finished third overall. Prior to that, he hadn't raced for the month since the Tour de France, where he'd been less than thrilled with 28th place overall – especially after having finished as the runner-up at the Tour the previous year, behind Spain's Carlos Sastre.

A year later, when the Worlds were in fact held in Australia, in Geelong, near Melbourne, Evans was up there again in the mix at the end of the 263km race on home turf, but was powerless to finish any higher than 17th in the reduced-bunch sprint against the likes of winner Thor Hushovd of Norway, silver medallist Matti Breschel (Denmark) and Evans' own Australian teammate Allan Davis who took the bronze medal.

Not that it had been all plain sailing; far from it, in fact. Cavendish had started the 2011 Vuelta, expecting that to be his final race but ended up finishing his preparation with a stage win at the Tour of Britain. How? Sickness had forced him out of the Spanish Grand Tour as early as stage 4. It turned out that he was more under the weather than actually sick – coupled, Ellingworth suggested in Project Rainbow, with the "tension" in his HTC trade team, which disbanded after the 2011 season, over rumours that Cavendish would be joining Team Sky in 2012, which he duly did.

In 2014, Poland's Michal Kwiatkowski proved you could win the Worlds via a third option in three years: the Tour of Britain. In what was a breakout season for the then 23-year-old, Kwiatkowski's victories included two stages and the overall at the Volta ao Algarve, Strade Bianche, the Tour de Romandie prologue, the Polish time trial championships, and a stage and second overall at the Tour of Britain, where it was clear that he was in flying form.

Rather than follow Cavendish's lead of four years perviously, Sagan didn't adjust his race programme, but instead recovered from his injuries and then knuckled down to training, riding the team time trial a week before the road race for his Tinkoff-Saxo trade team – and finishing last out of 27 teams – before he put the world's best to the sword and took his first rainbow jersey ahead of Australian Michael Matthews and Lithuanian Ramunas Navardauskas.

Summary: Alaphilippe exceeded even his own hopes and ambitions at this year's Tour de France, defending the yellow jersey late into the race, and even eliciting whispers about him winning the whole thing. Alas, it wasn't to be, but two stage wins and the adulation of the French public will only serve to be fuel to the fire of a rider who must start the Worlds road race as the favourite following yet another phenomenal season, with a good showing at the Canada races proving he's coming back into form at just the right time.

Summary: The above list of Van der Poel's last five races is a little misleading: prior to August's Arctic Race of Norway, the Dutchman's last road race had been Amstel Gold, in April – which he won. Still relatively new to road-racing, the two-time cyclo-cross world champion has nevertheless taken to it like a duck to water, and will be very dangerous in Yorkshire, having taken three stage wins and the overall title at the Tour of Britain.

Summary: Having not had the greatest 2019 season by his own high standards – he took a win at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana at the start of the year and then a stage of the Tour de Yorkshire in May – Van Avermaet seems to have come good right when it matters, taking a string of good positions in the run-up to the Worlds road race, with third at the GP de Québec and victory at the GP de Montréal.