Preview World Championships Time Trial 2025 | Pogacar wants to stop Evenepoel from taking 3 in a row
CyclingTuesday, 16 September 2025 at 13:50
The 2025 UCI Road World Championships for elite riders kicks off Sunday with the men’s and women’s time trials. For the men, the riders will tackle a 40.6-kilometer course in and around Kigali, where a successor to Remco Evenepoel will be sought, something IDLProCycling.com explores further in this article.
Evenepoel took the title last year in Zurich, Switzerland, after also winning the year before in Stirling, Scotland. The Belgian then held off Filippo Ganna and Edoardo Affini of the Italian Azzurri. Ganna had already won the world title in 2020 and 2021, while Tobias Foss surprised everyone by becoming world champion in 2022.
Other big names on the recent honor roll include Rohan Dennis, Tony Martin, Bradley Wiggins, and Fabian Cancellara. The last Dutch winner, of course, was Tom Dumoulin, who claimed the rainbow jersey in Bergen, Norway, in 2017.
Practical information men's World Championships Time Trial 2025
- Sunday, Sept. 21, Kigali (Rwanda)
- Participants (follows when the list is final)
- Classification: WC
In this article
- Most recent winners
- Course, weather and times
- Favorites
- TV coverage information
Most recent winners men's World Time Trial Championships
2024 Remco Evenepoel
2023 Remco Evenepoel
2022 Tobias Foss
2021 Filippo Ganna
2020 Filippo Ganna
2019 Rohan Dennis
2018 Rohan Dennis
2017 Tom Dumoulin
2016 Tony Martin
2015 Vasil Kiryienka
2023 Remco Evenepoel
2022 Tobias Foss
2021 Filippo Ganna
2020 Filippo Ganna
2019 Rohan Dennis
2018 Rohan Dennis
2017 Tom Dumoulin
2016 Tony Martin
2015 Vasil Kiryienka
World men's time trial championship 2025: Course, weather and times
On Sunday, the elite men face a 40.6-kilometer route with around 680 meters of elevation gain. The start is at the BK Arena, the largest indoor stadium in East Africa. The first eight kilometers serve as a warm-up, being relatively flat.
Then comes the Côte de Nyanza, a 2.5-kilometer climb at 5.8%, providing the first real test for the climbers’ legs. After a descent, this climb must be tackled again from the other side: 6.6 kilometers long at an average gradient of 3.5%
Both summits also serve as intermediate checkpoints and following a seven-kilometer descent (31.6 kilometers covered in total), a third checkpoint appears. Then it’s on to the Côte de Péage, a 2-kilometer climb at 6.0% average.
This comes right before the final obstacle of the day: the Côte de Kimihurura. This climb is 1.3 kilometers at 6.3% and is also paved with African cobblestones. After a short breather, the final kilometer also rises at 4%, before the finish line, like in all the races, is drawn at the Kigali Convention Centre.
Continue reading below...
Weather
It looks like the riders won’t have to complain about the conditions on Sunday. Temperatures of 26°C are expected in Kigali, with virtually no chance of rain and only light winds.
Times
Start: 1:45 PM (first rider)
Finish: 4:50 PM (last rider)
Start: 1:45 PM (first rider)
Finish: 4:50 PM (last rider)
Favorites World Championships Time Trial men 2025
The list of participants is not yet official, so this section may still be subject to change.
No Filippo Ganna in Rwanda, and that alone says a lot about the nature of the course that has been put together. With a total of 680 meters of climbing over just forty kilometers, pure specialists like the Italian have judged their chances too slim, making the trip to Rwanda not worthwhile.
Top favorite is Remco Evenepoel, who already delivered the rainbow jersey to Belgium in both 2023 and 2024 in Scotland and Switzerland. The Belgian hasn’t ridden any time trials in the run-up to these Worlds, but his position on the TT bike is practically second nature, so no problems are expected there on Sunday. Ilan Van Wilder and Florian Vermeersch are the other Belgian participants.
Tadej Pogacar will also be there, representing Slovenia, something that doesn’t happen too often. When he lined up against the clock at Worlds, like in 2023, things didn’t go especially well for him. Still, the hilly African circuit offers him a real chance of success.
Behind them, attention quickly shifts to the Aussies, who bring Jay Vine and Luke Plapp, two true “all-or-nothing” riders. Both have been targeting these Worlds for a long time and, on a good day, could get close to Evenepoel, just as Vine did against Ganna in the recent Vuelta time trial. But they could just as easily crash out on one of the descents. Magnus Sheffield, representing the USA, belongs to the same high-risk, high-reward category.
For the Netherlands, the hope is on Thymen Arensman, whose diesel engine should suit this course. However, Arensman tore a glute muscle in his last race, the Tour of Britain, so it remains to be seen how far he can get.
With Ganna absent, the Italians start with Matteo Sobrero and Mattia Cattaneo, while Switzerland lines up Stefan Küng and Mauro Schmid. France brings time trial specialist Bruno Armirail and top talent Paul Seixas, the reigning junior world champion in the discipline. Iván Romeo (Spain) and Maximilian Schachmann (Germany) are also making the trip from Europe.
According to IDLProCycling.com, who are the favorites for the men's 2025 World Time Trial Championships?
Top favorites: Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) and Jay Vine (Australia)
Outsiders: Tadej Pogacar (Australia), Luke Plapp (Australia) and Thymen Arensman (Netherlands)
Long shots: Matteo Sobrero, Mattia Cattaneo (Italy), Ilan Van Wilder (Belgium), Magnus Sheffield (United States), Stefan Küng, (Switzerland), Ivan Romeo (Spain), Paul Seixas and Bruno Armirail (France)
Outsiders: Tadej Pogacar (Australia), Luke Plapp (Australia) and Thymen Arensman (Netherlands)
Long shots: Matteo Sobrero, Mattia Cattaneo (Italy), Ilan Van Wilder (Belgium), Magnus Sheffield (United States), Stefan Küng, (Switzerland), Ivan Romeo (Spain), Paul Seixas and Bruno Armirail (France)
TV coverage World time trial championships men 2025
The men start after the women, at 1:45 p.m. 10 minutes before the start, you can turn to Sporza (VRT1), Eurosport 1, NPO 1 and HBO Max for live footage.
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Latest Comments
- Roger Vlaeminck says Mads is not a good rider? Where is the headline saying you don't even have to be a good rider to win the World Road Championship says Roger Vlaeminck, who never won it!!? Perhaps his aging mind needs to think about what the heck he's saying.packfiller7103-09-2025
- Wow, there is so much criticism of the UAE XRG riders. Why so much criticism is being leveled solely at the riders is baffling. The UAE XRG management deserves a good amount of the criticism aimed at the team, as a whole. They have not managed the talent they have at all. They failed miserably to properly handle young Isaac del Toro on that penultimate day of the Giro. And they have not handled Juan Ayuso well either. If they didn't have Tadej Pogacar in their roster, we might not be talking about them as winners, at all. So many think that Ayuso has shown that he is not a "team" player at all. Does anybody think that he might be thinking about his own future at this point? That he might want to feel like the team has his back, when they load the pressure onto him? And Joao is not a team leader. That burden might be laid on him by the management, but they need to properly support that assignment, not make it a contentious situation, within the team. And then how management has conducted themselves throughout this parting of ways between themselves and Ayuso has been totally indiscreet. And yet people want to pile onto Ayuso when he tells the truth about the manner that this is all soap opera is developing. He wants out. He shouldn't be getting so much negative criticism for that. It's a situation that has soured. Yes he has a contract, but he is not the first, nor will he be the last that wants to get out of a relationship that just isn't working anymore. And DeCauwer seems to have very vague reasons for criticizing Almeida. He does realize that Jonas is the second best Grand Tour rider of this current generation, so it should be no shame that Joao is behind him in the standings. Riders are giving their all in an extremely difficult sport that stretches them, often beyond their limits. Now many are wanting to send them to Behavioral School as well? The criticism ought to mellow out, or it ought to simply be ignored, as nothing more than blah, blah, blah, not worth the headlines it gets
reemmo002-09-2025 - In 5yrs, Pogi will be a top Twitch streamer living on baked goods while Urska is still racing.Veganpotter11-08-2025
- All they learned is that at the end of a 3 week race, Wout can beat him on a slightly bumpy stage. Obviously, this is very much thanks to Wout not racing for GC every day. This doesn't teach them a thing for Jonas beating Pogi. Not saying Jonas will never beat him again. But this absolutely won't have anything to do with it if he does beat him.Veganpotter28-07-2025
- Well, he eventually Pogacar pays the price for his insane spring campaign which was really crazyRosenkohl196125-07-2025
- Maybe I was a bit disrespectful to Heiden. What he did was unique and exceptional but he wasn't the only one who combined those distances, nowadays it is just not possible and nobody competes in both distances. The same is true for cycling with for example the combination of Roubaix and de Tour de France. In Merckx era there were more riders who managed a top10 in both races than currently.Joostmehrtens19-06-2025
- Two old men shouting at pigeons in the park…JonS16-06-2025
- Out of touch old men hankering after their youth through rose tinted spectacles, their arrogance almost outshines their irrelevance. Turn the volume down, this modern stuff just isn't music like we used to sing...johnny20whales16-06-2025
- In talking speed skating, the days when Heiden did that, nobody else did that. And Eddy couldn't do the equivalent of the bike. His 200 on the velodrome was good, but not world competitive for gold. Heiden was in his own world on the ice, moreso than Eddy if we pretend Eric didn't have a very short career on the ice.Veganpotter16-06-2025
- They wouldn't have dropped HIM so easily.... the GOAT. They would have dropped the rest from that era easily thoughVeganpotter16-06-2025
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