Cycling World Championships in Australia means setting an alarm for 1.30am

This week, the cycling world gathers for the second time in history in Australia for the World Championship. After Melbourne and Geelong staged a title fight in 2010, it will be Wollongong’s turn, a city eighty kilometers south of Sydney, from Sunday.

“Why are we down again? The question came from the UCI and in the state of New South Wales they said yes straight away,” race director Scott Sunderland explains.

Most cyclists have already arrived in Sydney earlier this week to acclimatise. It’s eight hours behind the Netherlands.

Individual time trials are scheduled for Sunday. “For the first time, men and women are riding the exact same distance and in the exact same route. You’ll have to set the alarm to one and a half.”

Wollongong, with a population of more than 300,000, will seem familiar to few. It owes its name (“the sound of the waves”) to the aborigines, the island’s first inhabitants.

It’s a quiet neighbour, Sydney, of five million people.

“What will the world see here next week? The white lighthouse often appears as well as the unique geography. You have beautiful white beaches and a beautiful coastline, and you are suddenly in the mountains less than ten kilometers inland.”

Tourism plays a role in choosing to pay nearly twenty million euros to organize such an event. “But they also have another target in the state of New South Wales. They want to organize ten world championships in ten years. Soon there will also be a world championships in cross-country athletics and a world championships in swimming.”

“The events ensure that more jobs are created for young people. They give a boost to the local economy as well as sports facilities. This is especially important in small towns like Wollongong.”

From a sporting point of view, not all eyes will be on home drivers. Remarkably, Rohan Dennis and Caleb Ewan are not among them. Sunderland doesn’t talk about it, so he can only guess about Dennis’ cancellation.

“I read that Dennis’s brother is getting married. But I don’t know if that’s the real reason why he isn’t there. I know he was disappointed in the trial period. He told us so. He’d prefer fifty kilometers or more. It also seems to me that he’s not just going to leave for a place in the centers.” The first five.”

“Caleb hasn’t been in great shape all year. And the track isn’t really flat. We could have taken care of that, but then the tour got a little less beautiful from a tourist point of view. A sprinter can still win here, by the way, provided he’s in good shape and has a running team. Completely by him. Australia has another strong rider Michael Matthews. He won the gold at U23 in 2010 in Geelong.”

The peloton has to climb the steep Mount Pleasant twelve times. Slope peaking fourteen percent. “I heard last week that someone there had measured a 24 percent increase, but those numbers are unknown to me.”

Slopes are always good for Mathieu van der Poel. The eyes of the Dutch will mainly turn to him. But Bauke Mollema and Dylan van Baarle, who finished second in last year’s road race, also have a chance to succeed Joop Zoetemelk (1985).

They will be joined by Dutch champion Pascal Einkorn, Daan Hall, Taco van der Horn, Jan Maas and Wat Boyles.

Tom Dumoulin will initially show one of his last time trial tricks, but the 2017 world champion announced his retirement earlier than expected. Mollema and Hoole are now the appointed men.

This is how you follow the Cycling World Championships at NOS:

With women, national coach Loes Gunnewijk has several candidates in her pick who could claim more than one gold medal. On Sunday, Ellen van Dijk, Animek van Vleuten and Shereen van Anroy will ride the first time test before the start of the road race on Saturday 24 September (accompanied by Florty McCaig, Ryan Marcus, Demi Fullering and Marian Voss).

During the week, there is still a mixed team time trial on the program. The Netherlands is the vice world champion in this field. Mollema, Van Dyck, Van Velouten and Marcus are in attendance again this time, complete with van der Paul and Hall.

Marcus and Mollema were also there in 2019 when the Netherlands took the gold in this new segment.