The second day of competition at the 2026 UCI Road World Championships in Montréal, Canada, highlighted the power and stamina of the Under 23 riders.
Australia’s Felicity Wilson-Haffenden mastered the 20.3km individual time trial (ITT) course in to take a dominant victory in the Women Under 23 category with a margin of 28 seconds on the Netherlands’ Nienke Vinke. Luca Vierstraete secured the bronze medal for Belgium in a close battle for the podium.
Competition for the Men Under 23 ITT rainbow jersey saw Ryan Gal give the Netherlands their second UCI World Champion title in this category, 19 years after Lars Boom, with a small gap to Italy’s Nicolas Milesi (+7.01 seconds) and Spain’s Héctor Álvarez Martínez (+11.88).
Wilson-Haffenden smashes the clock (again)
The Women Under 23 ITT brought together 52 contenders representing 31 nations. Georgette Vignonfodo (BEN) was the first down the ramp to cover the route back and forth between the Jeanne Mance Park and Nuns’ Island. Wilson-Haffenden was the penultimate starter, a minute-and-a-half before Slovakia’s Viktória Chladoňová.
As they set off, Vinke was in the hot seat, having started around 45 minutes earlier and setting a benchmark time of 28:08.19 (43.263km/h). She retained the best time at the first checkpoint (km 6) after everyone had passed it. But Wilson-Haffenden took the lead after 14.5km and powered to victory on the final ramp to the line, averaging 44.005km/h to clock 27:40.72.
“This is a big win for me to pace something well, because it’s something I really struggle with,” she said afterwards. “To be honest, I did explode myself a little bit on the way out; the tailwind gets you so excited, and then you turn and you realise you still have legs and they do actually go lactic. On the way home, I was just fighting with everything I had. You can lose so much time in the last 600 metres. I saw the rainbows at the top and I went as hard as I could.”
Aged 21, Wilson-Haffenden claimed her third rainbow jersey, after the Women Junior ITT in 2023 and the team time trial - mixed relay last year with Australia. “I came to cycling pretty late,” she said. “In Glasgow [2023], I was still only one year into cycling, so to sit here three years later, with three world titles, I never would have believed it. I have my eyes on more in the future. I am a hungry person and the Elite title is something I dream of but, right now, I’m gonna be so happy just to sit in my room and have a look at those three tonight.”
She follows in the footsteps of Zoe Bäckstedt (GBR), crowned last year in the Under 23 ranks after a previous ITT UCI world title as a Junior, and who took Elite silver behind Switzerland’s Marlen Reusser on Sunday.
Behind Wilson-Haffenden and Vinke, Vierstraete took bronze. The 20-year-old Belgian trailed by 45.07 seconds at the finish, just ahead of Chladoňová (+45.96) and another Australian specialist, Mackenzie Coupland (+46.99).
Gal takes a surprise rainbow
The Men Under 23 ITT saw 67 riders (44 nations) battle over 31.2 kilometres, also starting and finishing at the Jeanne Mance Park, and crossing the St Lawrence river to visit the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, home of the Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Ryan Gal headed to the hot seat just as the last starters took off, including Héctor Álvarez Martínez. The Spaniard enjoyed the strongest start, while Gal was fifth (+11.75) at the first checkpoint (km 10.7) and fourth (+9.11) at the second (km 19.1). The 21-year-old Dutch powerhouse turned the tide in the final stretch, setting a benchmark of 37:26.16 (50.166km/h) that nobody managed to beat.
“I don’t believe it,” Gal said moments after becoming the new Men Under 23 ITT UCI World Champion. “At first, I was just happy I did a good ride. Unfortunately, I got sick this week, so it was a bit of a race against the clock to get fit again. I was satisfied that I could do the ride I wanted. It got even better as time went on. Unbelievable!”
“I think the biggest difference I made was on the final ramps, because I still had the power to sprint up them,” the Dutch youngster added. “I had something left for the final two kilometres and I just went all out to the finish.”
Nobody came close to his performance in the finale. Italy’s Nicolas Milesi was the closest at the finish while Álvarez dropped to third place, significantly ahead of the USA’s Ashlin Barry (+33.78), aged just 18 and already following in the footsteps of his parents, who were both professional riders at the turn of the century. His mother, Dede Demet-Barry, took a silver medal in the ITT at the 2004 Olympic Games.