The junior ladies’s street race on the UCI Road World Championships is simply 73.6km lengthy and fewer punchy than final yr’s route in Glasgow. There are a few vital climbs that ought to choose the very best riders earlier than a comparatively flat end.
The winner will want velocity in addition to climbing energy to take dwelling the rainbow bands in Zurich. Cyclingnews appears at just a few of the highest favourites.
Célia Gery (France)
Double French nationwide champion Célia Gery has had a stand-out season that included two levels of the Watersley Ladies Challenge and the Tour of Flanders victory – upgrading her third place in that race in 2023. She’s a contender in virtually each race she enters with last podium placings within the EPZ Omloop van Borsele, Tour du Gévaudan Occitanie and Bizkaikoloreak stage races.
A fourth place within the European Championships indicators her robust type and she or he will likely be in her factor within the a lot hillier street race in Zurich.
Cat Ferguson (Great Britain)
British champion Cat Ferguson had excessive expectations on her shoulders eventually yr’s Worlds in Glasgow and completed second to France’s Julie Bego within the street race.
This yr, she has the higher hand as an 18-year-old and a slew of wins all through the season together with the GC within the Omloop van Borsele, Tour du Gévaudan Occitanie and Bizkaikoloreak in addition to podiums within the Tour of Flanders, La Choralis Fourmies Féminine and Piccolo Trofeo Alfredo Binda. Already signed to the WorldTour Movistar workforce by 2027, her expertise has been widely known. She simply has to have luck and energy to complete it off.
Puck Langenbarg (Netherlands)
European Champion Puck Langenbarg wasn’t precisely the highest favorite for the race in Limburg, however the Dutch champion packs a robust dash and benefitted from a big group coming to the road. With a descent and a small climb within the last 10km, there’s a good probability for an additional diminished bunch dash in Zurich, and Langenbarg’s type and confidence make her a prime favorite in that state of affairs.
Viktória Chladoňová (Slovakia)
The junior world champion in MTB cross nation and winner of the Nové Mesto World Cup for juniors, Chladoňová can be the bronze medalist at Worlds in cyclocross. While she hasn’t raced as extensively on the street as her rivals on the UCI degree, she did place second total in the one Nations Cup she did this yr on the Tour du Gévaudan Occitanie and stays a prime contender for street Worlds.
Auke De Buysser (Belgium)
If the ladies’s junior race comes right down to a dash, there are few within the area quicker than De Buysser, who received the dash classification on the Omloop Borsele, the Belgian street title, the GP Ceratizit Junior, the Vermarc Cycling Project Junior two-day race, and half a dozen national-level races all in bunch sprints. A podium on the Piccolo Trofeo Binda reveals she will be able to recover from the climbs, too, making the Belgian a outsider to observe.
