The youngest talents of the 2025 UCI Road World Championships took over Kigali on Tuesday, the third day of competition in Rwanda, with male and female Juniors battling for glory in the individual time trial (ITT).
In the morning, Megan Arens put in a dominant performance to bring the Netherlands their first rainbow jersey of the event, after Anna van der Breggen and Demi Vollering took silver and bronze medals respectively in the Women Elite ITT on Sunday’s opening day of competition. The Dutch youngster won the Women Junior event ahead of Spain’s Paula Ostiz and Norway’s Oda Aune Gissinger.
Arens’ countryman Michiel Mouris also claimed victory when, in the afternoon, he got the better of the USA’s Ashlin Barry in the Men Junior ITT. Belgium’s Seff Van Kerckhove rounded out the podium thanks to a strong finish.
Arens’ golden step-up performance
The morning’s action was full of thrills with a hard-fought battle for the rainbow jersey in the Women Junior ITT. Some 47 riders (representing 29 nations) took on the 18.3km course (featuring 225m of elevation) and just three seconds covered the best four riders at the intermediate point (kilometre 14.7). But Arens mastered the gradients and cobbles of the Côte de Kimihurura (1.3km, 6.3%) to take gold.
At last year’s UCI Road World Championships in Zurich, Switzerland, Arens finished fourth in the road race and ninth in the ITT. The 2025 season saw her step up to victory in the Piccolo Trofeo Alfredo Binda (the second event of the UCI Women Junior Nations’ Cup), the ITT of the Dutch National Championships, and now a maiden rainbow jersey.
“I cannot believe it actually. It’s really unbelievable, I don’t know what to say,” was her first reaction. “It was a really tough parcours. We made a pace plan obviously but it was hard to reach the watts so I just focused on my feelings, I just gave everything I could, and it worked out! Riding the cobbles on a TT bike is so different and I never practised that actually. It was really new. I got in with an open mind like: ‘I will see how it goes’. In recon it was pretty good so I had a good feeling about it.”
Arens maintained an average speed of 42.574km/h to take victory with a margin of 35.30 seconds over Ostiz and 37.54 seconds to Gissinger. Third at the intermediate point, Great Britain’s Erin Boothman, a four-time Junior UCI World Champion on the track, dropped down to fifth at the finish behind fourth-placed Roos Muller (NED).
Mouris brings more Oranje power
The battle was even tighter in the afternoon as Mouris claimed the rainbow jersey only 6.84 seconds quicker than Barry and 8.58 seconds ahead of Van Kerckhove, who was on the hotseat for some 15 minutes before Mouris edged him out. This is the Netherlands’ first Men Junior ITT UCI World Champion title, while Arens’ was their third in the Women Junior category.
“It’s amazing for the whole team and incredible we both win here,” Mouris celebrated. “It was really, really difficult of course. I watched the time trials the days before and I knew a lot of guys would blow up. I tried to start conservatively but still it was really long to the line. It’s a dream come true.”
A recent winner of the time trial of Aubel-Thimister-Stavelot in Belgium, after already ruling the Junior ITT at last year’s UEC European Championships and taming the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix Juniors in the spring, Mouris had the third best time at the first intermediate point (kilometre 10.6), on the Côte de Nyanza. He took over on the following descent and resisted on the final gradients towards the Kigali Convention Centre, past the Côte de Kimihurura (total distance: 22.6km, with 350m of elevation).
“I’m not the lightest but you see big guys have the power to win here,” Mouris concluded after proving to be the strongest of 85 contenders, representing 57 nations.