2024 World Championships in Zurich suits puncheurs and Classics stars

The routes for the 2024 Road World Championships in Zurich were revealed on the final weekend of the Glasgow ‘super Worlds’ before Lotte Kopecky took victory in the women’s road race with Switzerland set to host the world’s best riders from September 21 to 29. 

Zurich hosts the finale of the headline events, with the men's road race starting northwest of the city in Winterthur and the women’s to the east in Uster. The routes contain a similarly punchy finishing circuit of Zurich’s city centre to Glasgow, but without as many corners and they are 279.2km and 157.6km in length respectively. 

Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel and Wout Van Aert are among those in the early discussion for being best suited to the brutal parcours. 

The route into Zurich continually undulates, with the Kyburg (1.2km at 12%) as the hardest early punch in the men’s and Binz (4.6km at 4.5%) the early test in the women’s, before the Zürichbergstrasse (1.1km at 8%) and Witikon (2.3km at 5.7%) line each of the circuits and will decide the race.

Swiss stars Stefan Küng and Stefan Bisseger were at the presentation after competing in Glasgow and Stirling to assess the course. Küng was excellent in this year’s road race finishing fifth behind only Mathieu Van der Poel, Van Aert, Pogačar and Mads Pedersen. 

“With the two climbs in the road race circuit, there will be movement in the races. They will be open and exciting,” Küng said. 

“The races will definitely be difficult,” added Bisseger. 

The circuit itself is 27km long and will be tackled four times in the women’s race and seven times in the men's, amounting to an extremely difficult day which should breed similarly exciting races to the 2022 World Championships for the finest Classics riders in the world to battle it out. 

Kopecky and Mathieu van der Poel will arrive at Zurich 2024 as the defending champions, after both winning solo in two of the most thrilling races of the year in Glasgow. 

Time Trials

Both the elite individual time trials finish at the Sechseläutenplatz in Zurich after a 30km route for the women and 46.3km for the men. The final few kilometres run alongside the picturesque Lake Zurich. 

The men’s route is mainly flat for the opening 20km before four hills of varying difficulty are met in the middle of the course ahead of the flat run into Zurich. The women will face a different challenge with only five kilometres of flat road from the start in Gossau ZH before the same four hills are tackled before the flat finale. 

Newly crowned men’s ITT World Champion, Remco Evenepoel will likely be the favourite to defend his rainbow jersey on this course which arguably suits him even better than the Stirling route. 

The women’s field will be led by the now two-time ITT World Champion Chloé Dygert as she looks to win a third title on a very difficult course.

UCI President David Lappartient was at the announcement of the routes in Glasgow. “Zurich and the surrounding hills have a long history in cycling and will be the scene of great races,” he said in his welcome address. 

Zurich 2024 sees the World Championships return to its normal place on the calendar in September, giving Van der Poel, Kopekcy, Evenepoel and Dygert abnormally long stints in their respective rainbow jerseys. 

Alongside the elite events will also be the junior, u23 and para road cycling events.