Lotte Kopecky, Chloe Dygert and Grace Brown are contenders for the World Championships time trial(Image credit: Getty Images)
The 2024 UCI Road World Championships will kick off with the elite women's 29.9km individual time trial on September 22 in Zurich, Switzerland.
The participants will roll down the starting ramp in Gossau and climb over the foothills of the Pfannenstiel, with 327 metres of elevation gain, and then descend and race along Lake Zurich as the roads flatten out in the final 10km toward the finish line in Zurich.
Many nations competing at these World Championships have not yet confirmed their rosters, but Cyclingnews highlights eight of the most likely candidates to secure a medal in the individual time trial.
Cyclingnews will continue to update this page with the favourites for the combined elite and under-23 time trials as the nations confirm their participants.
Grace Brown (Australia)
Grace Brown will lead a powerful Australian team in her final World Championships before she retires at the end of the season.
She is set to hang up her wheels having had one of her most successful seasons in her seven-year career with wins at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and gold medals in the individual time trials at the Australian Championships and the Paris Olympic Games.
Brown has said that the final goal of her racing career is to win the world title in the individual time trial before turning her attention to a support role for her national teammates in the road race the following week.
She has a serious shot at winning the rainbow jersey having finished 5th in 2020, and second in 2022 and 2023. She was also fourth in the time trial at the Tokyo Olympic Games 2021, before winning the gold at the Paris Olympic Games this summer.
Chloe Dygert (USA)
(Image credit: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)
Chloe Dygert is a two-time individual time trial world champion, winning titles in Yorkshire in 2019 and Glasgow in 2023, and will be looking to add a third time trial world title to her collection in Zurich.
Dygert will be the out-right favourite for the powerful course offered in Zurich and she will undoubtedly have extra motivation to win after crashing in the individual time trial at the Paris Olympic Games and finishing with the bronze medal behind Brown and Anna Henderson (Great Britain).
Dygert crashed again in the road race at the Olympic Games, where her teammate Kristen Faulkner went on to secure the gold medal, but she quickly went into recovery mode and then won gold in the Team Pursuit on the track.
Since the Olympic Games, Dygert has raced at the Tour de France Femmes where she finished second behind Demi Vollering in the stage 3 time trial, and she finished second at the GP Plouay, showing strong form ahead of her next races at the Worlds.
Lotte Kopecky (Belgium)
Lotte Kopecky has won six consecutive individual time trial titles at the Belgian Championships, and while always a contender in the discipline, it has only been in recent years that she has honed in on her strengths on the WorldTour and international events like the European Championships, World Championships and Olympic Games.
She turned heads last year with her overall performance at the Tour de France Femmes where she climbed with the best up the Col du Tourmalet and then finished third in the closing stage 8 time trial to take second overall.
At the Worlds, she finished ninth in the time trial at the Wollongong in 2022 but opted out of the event in Glasgow where she focussed on and won three world titles in the road race, elimination race and points race.
While she was disappointed after crashing and finishing sixth place in the time trial at the Olympic Games, has has continued to progress, notably taking the gold medal at the European Championships and setting herself up as one of the favourites for the world title in Zurich.
Demi Vollering (Netherlands)
Demi Vollering (Image credit: Getty Images)
Demi Vollering will lead the Dutch team at the World Championships in both the time trial and the road race, the team confirmed by national team coach Loes Gunnewijk last month.
Although Vollering has never won the time trial at the Dutch Championships, she has finished on the podium in the previous two editions. She has only participated in one elite time trial at the World Championships in Glasgow last year where she finished sixth.
But on the WorldTour, Vollering has become one of the main contenders in the discipline, last year finishing second in the time trials during stages at the Tour de France Femmes and Tour de Suisse Women.
This year, she won the time trial at the Tour de Suisse Women, was third at the Dutch Championships, and finished fifth at the Olympic Games.
It was her remarkable performance that won the stage 3 time trial at the Tour de France Femmes, where she took over the yellow jersey in Rotterdam, that solidified her progress in the discipline. Although that time trail was a much shorter 6.3km, it was the route's elements of attrition that favoured Vollering, where she could hold her maximum effort over the top of the gradual climb from the start of the race, all the way to the finish.
Although the Worlds route is a much longer 29.9km, there are similar features that include a longer hill on the way out followed by a descent and flat run-in to the finish, which could again favour Vollering.
Ellen van Dijk (Netherlands)
The Dutch team have not yet announced the second rider that will represent the Netherlands alongside Vollering in the time trial but it will likely be between three-time world champion Ellen van Dijk and reigning national champion Riejanne Markus.
Van Dijk might have the edge on Markus having just secured the silver medal at the European Championships. The result highlights her progress in the discipline since returning to the peloton in March after taking maternity leave from racing the previous season.
Upon her return, she won the time trials at Vuelta Extremadura Feminas and Tour de Normandie. She was also part of the Lidl-Trek team that won the team time trial at La Vuelta Femenina. She represented the Netherlands at the Olympic Games where she finished 11th in the time trial and was then sixth in the event at the Tour de France Femmes.
She brings unrivalled experience to the Dutch team in the time trial having already won three world titles in 2013, 2021 and 2022, along with four gold medals at the European Championships from 2016-2019, and her Hour Record set in 2022.
Anna Henderson (Great Britain)
Anna Henderson (Image credit: Getty Images)
Despite breaking her collarbone twice this season, Anna Henderson made a remarkable comeback to win her second individual time trial title at the British Championships and the silver medal at the Olympic Games.
After winning the under-23 time trial at the nationals in 2019, Henderson has gradually built her career into becoming one of the major time trial contenders on the WorldTour.
She has secured two elite British time trial titles in 2021 and 2024, while also earning a silver medal in the European Championship and fourth at the Glasgow Worlds in 2023.
Henderson arrives at the World Championship buoyed by her recent three-year deal with Lidl-Trek that begins in 2025, where she will bring added time trial strength to the American WorldTour team.
Christina Schweinberger (Austria)
Christina Schweinberger turned heads last year when she secured the bronze medal in the time trial at the Worlds in Glasgow.
While that was her first major result in the discipline, she had already found success at the national level winning the Austrian time trial title in 2022 and the stage 3 time trial at Gracia-Orlova that same year.
More telling and recent performances include her bronze medals in the time trial at the European Championships in 2023 in Emmen, Netherlands, and again last week in Hasselt, Belgium.
Schweinberger is becoming known for her late-season form so watch for her to surprise in Zurich.
Juliette Labous (France)
Juliette Labous (Image credit: Getty Images)
Juliette Labous has been working on her time trial strength since turning professional with Sunweb, now DSM-Firmenich PostNL in 2017.
She has made steady improvements over the last eight seasons, winning the French national title in 2020 and finishing on the podium in three other editions.
She has twice finished inside the top 10 at the World Championships; sixth in 2021 and fifth in 2023. However, her strongest performance was at the Olympic Games where she finished just outside of the medal in fourth in Paris. Watch for Labous to carry that form into the World Championships.
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Kirsten Frattini is the Deputy Editor of Cyclingnews, overseeing the global racing content plan.
Kirsten has a background in Kinesiology and Health Science. She has been involved in cycling from the community and grassroots level to professional cycling's biggest races, reporting on the WorldTour, Spring Classics, Tours de France, World Championships and Olympic Games.
She began her sports journalism career with Cyclingnews as a North American Correspondent in 2006. In 2018, Kirsten became Women's Editor – overseeing the content strategy, race coverage and growth of women's professional cycling – before becoming Deputy Editor in 2023.
