Frustration among riders who were pulled from the World Championship road race: "You have to ask if this is the right way"

"Absurdly tough" is a term you don't often hear from cyclists who are used to getting on their bikes day after day in the Tour de France or riding 250 to 300-kilometer-long Monuments, but in the last week of September 2025, we heard it more than once in Central Africa.

Rwanda is also known as "the land of 1000 hills", so laying out a flat course is a utopia, but with 5500 meters of elevation gain and the external conditions, the 2025 World Championships may have been a bit too much of a good thing. Heat, high sun intensity, humidity, smog, and, in many cases, stomach and intestinal problems: the riders had to deal with it all.

It was clear in advance that it would be a knock-out race. But in the end, it also became a race of pull-out, as the organization had to summon riders to leave the race lap after lap. As a result, with two laps to go, only 32 riders remained in the race in Kigali.

The last group to be taken out at that point included Louis Vervaeke, Xandro Meurisse, Jordan Jegat, Valentin Madouas, Marco Frigo, Fausto Masnada, Mark Donovan, Jonathan Caicedo, Johannes Staune-Mittet, Attila Valter, Roger Adria, and Anthon Charmig. They were then riding at 9.53 minutes, below the announced ten-minute limit.

“That's a shame, because we were just riding to reach the finish,” Meurisse said after the race. The Belgian believes that the course in Rwanda – or at least the distance – could have been a little shorter. “There's a trend to make everything harder, like here with that extra lap and a few more climbs.”

“You see it more and more that fewer riders are reaching the finish line. Because we don't really get the chance,” he continues. "If there are 25 in the results and the rest are DNF, then maybe they should ask themselves if that's the way to do things. There are certainly more than 25 good riders at the start here."

“It's not that I'm angry, but we had planned to finish the race,” explains Meurisse. “It's always nice to finish a World Championship, and when they stop you, it's... not very nice. We knew in advance that it would be very tough and grueling with these conditions and the course, and that's how it turned out.”

The Dutchman Thymen Arensman was just ahead of that group, but had to drop out himself with cramps. He also argued for a slightly shorter World Championship. “I think it's also an idea to do two laps less, because this was perhaps a bit over the top. Especially with these conditions and at altitude, it's a bit too much.”

Next year in Montreal, the race will be 210 kilometers long instead of 270. However, the laps in Canada – albeit after a run-up phase – will be even shorter than in Rwanda, at 12 kilometers per lap compared to 15. Last year, the circuit in Zurich was 23 kilometers long and riders could finish in 20 minutes, compared to only 10 minutes in Rwanda.

There was some small rebuttal from Dutch national coach Koos Moerenhout, who only saw Bauke Mollema finish. “There is a tendency for the top riders to race earlier, and we have also seen some competition. In the past, you knew that you could do something different in the first 150 kilometers of a World Championship,” he said, referring to the fact that the leading groups often consisted of unknown riders on long run-up sections.