'A top three would be a hole-in-one' - McNulty, Simmons and Jorgenson give USA the best chance in decades for World Championships road race

When a rider like Tom Pidcock points to your elite men's team for the UCI Road World Championships and says, "they probably have the most strength in depth of any team" for Sunday's elite men's road race, that's a big compliment.

The last American rider to win on the same course in the Grand Prix de Montreal, Brandon McNulty, sees the 2026 Worlds as his country's best shot at their first elite men's title since 1993.

"It's the best team I think the U.S. have had," McNulty told Cyclingnews after the time trial on Sunday. "Of course there's going to be crazy good guys from all the nations, so we have our work cut out. I think we have a good team to race super aggressively and try to do something.

There's a ton of strong guys that we still don't think have ever really beaten before. So it's gonna be hard, but we have numbers to at least play our cards well."

The US team have McNulty, Matteo Jorgenson and Quinn Simmons as their protected riders. After Neilson Powless withdrew from the team due to illness, according to USA Cycling, he has been replaced by Riley Sheehan, who had felt snubbed by being named as a reserve.

The team also has Kevin Vermaerke, Artem Shmidt, Larry Warbasse, and Sean Quinn. McNulty, third in the GP de Montreal two weeks ago with Simmons, who finished fourth just behind, are the top contenders, together with Jorgenson, who was second overall in Tirreno-Adriatico this year, and remains one of the country's top one-day race competitors.

Cyclingnews caught up with Team USA's sports director for the elite men's race, Mike Creed, who seemed realistic about the team's chances based on the superstars they're up against - even in the absence of Tadej Pogačar, who is out because of his crash in the Vuelta a España. Isaac del Toro (Mexico), Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert (Belgium), and Paul Seixas (France) will be hard for the US riders to beat.

"[A top five] might be the best we can do, depending on who's in front," Creed tells Cyclingnews. "We're more capable of getting a medal with multiple guys at this race than ever. That doesn't mean we should, or it'll be a failure if we don't.

"Matteo [Jorgenson] was there and thereabouts at Québec [eighth -ed.] and he's going to have to have better legs on the day. I'm not writing him out, but he's acknowledged that. Kevin [Vermaerke] came out of the Vuelta - he spent like the last 10 days in the breakaway, so like if he's a little cooked, it wouldn't be the most surprising thing in the world. So, if you figure that we have two guys who don't have question marks over them about their form. [It will be] clear we made a mistake if we don't have anyone in the first 15," he added before giving a golf metaphor. "Par is top 15, top 10 is like a birdie, and I think top five, top three is a hole-in-one.

"Obviously, it's a World [Championships], and you want to dream for the sky, but the fact is just because we are excited to be in North America and have a really good team doesn't mean that Wout and Remco aren't who they are. I love the idea of a Rocky movie triumph - I'll be the happiest guy in the world if that happens, but I don't want these guys to make moves based off of a cinematic background score."

Tactics and strategy

Creed was able to watch the Under-23 Women and Junior Men's races to see how the races played out on the quite arduous Montreal circuit - 13.4 kilometres long with two significant climbs and very little flat roads in between.

"It was similar to how I thought it was going to play out, not because I'm incredibly smart or anything, but just because the course runs a certain way. In the women's race, when [the breakaway] had two minutes, you're like, 'They're not really making any inroads,' and then when the bigger-name riders went, they got it down to 30 seconds really, really quickly," says Creed.

"Then, [it was the] same thing in the Junior Men's race. Unless it's a bigger group than three or four - it has to probably be like six or seven - for it to be that dangerous. Otherwise, it's just really hard to be out there by yourself or in a small group, with the fast downhills where the pack can really pick up a lot of speed - free speed, accelerating out of the turns. All these things that just really add up when you're solo or in a small group.

"There's no room for error - you can't get caught behind; you don't want to chase. It's not like Remco [Evenepoel] in Montreal, where he bridged to the leading five or six by himself. Even as strong as he is, he got there, then on the next lap [he paid for it]. So it's not a climb that you want to do a lot by yourself unless everyone else is already smoked.

"You saw in the Women's Under-23 race, the Australian girl [Felicity Wilson-Haffenden], she just was dropping bombs on people. And even then, she went just a little too early, and it kind of gassed her."

In the Junior Men's race, Spain's Benjamín Noval attacked out of the bunch with 45km to go, reached the breakaway, then dropped them to go solo for almost two laps. It's the kind of scenario that a time trial world champion like Noval can pull off - and one Evenepoel can realistically do, too. How can the US team keep that from happening?

"By making sure that the guys are as fresh for that attack as possible," Creed replies. "You can't make Remco not Remco. You can only just prepare yourself the best you can for that move, and then hope for a little bit of luck after that. It's not always fun to have that in a race plan; you want as little 'hope' as possible in a race plan. But ultimately, I think there's probably two other guys that eight times out of ten can follow Remco from bottom to top."

That would be Seixas and Del Toro.

"Even then, they've got to have a fairly decent race leading into it. I think McNulty, six or seven times out of 10, is going to be able to stay with that, especially if he has a clean race. Simmons about the same, Matteo more or less the same. Because there is a drafting section in the middle of the climb. It's steeper at the bottom, then you can draft in that main part, so..."

Although the team had not yet held their strategy meeting at the time of our conversation, Creed says the riders were all "on the same page and really open to playing the cards close to their chest".

"I think we really want the best possible result. We all do."

In order to get their best shot at a world title, Creed says the race has to be as hard as possible before the end of the 110-kilometre run-in from Brossard.

"I think McNulty and Quinn and Matteo are very durable riders, and the more time on the pedals for everyone, the better. It could be windy at the start and there are some open sections. I don't think it would be something where you'd get Qatar-style echelons - it won't split to like 30 [riders] and then keep it all the way to the line. But it could just cause some being on the pedals and a little bit more stress than most people would generally like for a 270km race.

"The run-in to the circuits is not exactly straightforward. It's got a good little bump in it; it could be crosswinds over the bridge... I might be tempting fate saying that, because maybe we'll end up on the bad side of something, but I think as much of a shit-fight of a race as possible suits us. It eliminates a lot of variables."

Along with Belgium, Creed says the French team, who are fully behind Seixas, will be dictating the race.

"I would be surprised if France made the climb easy once," he says. "I'm sure France wants as many hard climbing kilometres as humanly possible. They probably don't want Wout to go up the road, and then have them chasing while Remco sits on. That's probably not a very enviable position. Belgium is very blessed in having a Remco because he can go with 60 km to go; he can also go with 15 km to go."

The earlier an attack, the easier it will be to chase down for nations that have full squads, but it depends on who ends up in a breakaway.

"If Remco's not bridging to a powerhouse like a Mads Pedersen or Stefan Küng - a guy who's going to go pull-for-pull with him and just help carry him along in all the high-speed downhill and flat sections - if he goes up there with a bunch of people who are just swinging, not helping him, then maybe [he can be chased down]," says Creed.

"We hope the race gets chaotic, and we're able to go in some moves mid-late and not use a lot of energy - have the race come up there, and we have guys in both selections. Then we end up having numbers, and then we can play from there.

"It's such a delicate fine edge because you want to slip into moves rather than make the moves, and you want the people that you slip in with to be people who can carry a lot of the weight. You want some Mads Pedersen-type to go with Quinn - that's a good move. It's not necessarily a good move if Quinn and Del Toro go, because then it would be a better position to sit on, and Quinn's not going to want to sit on."

Unlike in the past, Creed says riders from other countries aren't usually colluding because they share the same trade team the rest of the year.

"They don't do that anymore - they used to, but I think those days are gone. If you're on UAE, I think you're probably well-paid enough. That could probably happen if you had a guy who was like a straight-up domestique.

"You even saw last year in Kigali, Pogačar didn't wait for [Del Toro] - he kind of sat up for a second, and was like, 'Hey, you good?' And then was like, 'Oh, all right, well, I got to go, bye!' At the end of the day, they're there to win races, right?

"If anything, maybe it would be like the social pressure - if you got into a two-up breakaway - of trying to pull just as hard as your teammate because you guys have a friendly rivalry. Like last year with Del Toro, maybe he should have sat on a little bit and been like, 'Bro, I'm wrecked,' but you know, you get excited and stuff. But no, that's not a problem. I mean, Quinn's teammates with Mads, you know, like, unfortunately everyone's got teammates."

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