The men who line up on Avenue du Parc on Sunday, 27 September will race twelve laps of a circuit Isaac del Toro just conquered. The 22-year-old Mexican outsprinted French teenager Paul Seixas at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal on 13 September, the same 13.4-kilometer loop the Worlds field will tackle at the finish. Brandon McNulty was third, Remco Evenepoel fifth.
Tadej Pogacar, the two-time and reigning world champion, will not be there to defend the rainbow jersey. The Slovenian ended his 2026 season after a heavy crash on stage 8 of the Vuelta a España, when he hit a large rock at the roadside with 32 kilometers remaining.
The diagnosis was a concussion, a displaced fracture of the left collarbone and a stable fracture of the C7 vertebra. Collarbone surgery followed at Hospital Dexeus in Barcelona, and UAE Team Emirates-XRG confirmed he would sit out the rest of the campaign, including Montreal, the European Championships and Il Lombardia. He also extended his UAE contract until 2032.
“Of course, this isn’t the way I wanted my season to finish,” Pogacar said in the team’s statement. “Right now, the most important thing is to recover properly and give my body the time it needs.”
Del Toro’s dress rehearsal
The Grand Prix de Montréal is being treated as a live audition for the world title, and del Toro passed it. He tracked a Seixas attack inside the final 12 kilometers and then timed his sprint on Avenue du Parc, leaving the Frenchman without an answer. It was his twelfth win of the season.
The Worlds course amplifies the same demands. The men’s road race stretches 273.7 kilometers with 3,803 meters of climbing, starting in Brossard before the twelve Mount Royal laps. Each loop takes in the 2.3-kilometer Voie Camillien-Houde and the wall of Chemin de la Polytechnique, where gradients top 11 percent. It is a course built around cumulative punishment rather than a single summit finish, which is why cyclinguptodate.com columnist Félix Serna rated del Toro the pre-race favorite.
One caveat runs through the analysis: del Toro rides for Mexico, not UAE. At the Grand Prix, Adam Yates and Brandon McNulty softened the race for him in the closing laps. On Sunday, that shelter is gone.
The chase group behind him
Serna’s shortlist below del Toro reads like most preview pages this week: Remco Evenepoel, Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel, Tom Pidcock, Paul Seixas, Ben Healy, Primoz Roglic, Enric Mas, Juan Ayuso and Giulio Ciccone. Seixas, still a teenager, is the closest thing to a form pick after Montreal. Evenepoel arrives without a rainbow jersey to defend but with a full-strength Belgian selection.
Pogacar himself is expected to travel to Montreal as a supporter rather than a competitor. The men’s elite road race sets off from Brossard on Sunday, 27 September.
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