Tomorrow closes out Montreal’s Worlds week, and the Elite Men’s Road Race is the one race this entire nine-day championship has been building toward without actually knowing who it’s building toward. 273.7km, 3,803m of climbing, 12 laps of Mont Royal, rolling out of Brossard at 9:00am and due back at Parc Jeanne-Mance around 3:40pm. Two weeks ago we wrote that Pogačar’s Vuelta crash left this race with no rider the field could organize around. Nothing that’s happened since — not the time trial, not GP Montréal, not yesterday’s women’s race — has changed that. But Sunday’s race isn’t just the women’s race with more laps bolted on. It has a variable theirs didn’t: a third climb, three weeks old as a competitive proving ground, that nobody in the field has actually calibrated yet.

Quick Verdict: Worlds 2026 Elite Men’s Road Race

Detail	Info
Date	Sunday, September 27, 2026 — 9:00am start, Brossard
Distance	273.7km, 3,803m elevation gain
Course	110km flat loop through Montérégie, then 12 laps of the 13.4km Mont Royal circuit
Climbs, every lap	Voie Camillien-Houde, Côte de la Polytechnique, Côte Pagnuelo
Finish	Uphill false flat on Avenue du Parc, Parc Jeanne-Mance
Missing favorite	Tadej Pogačar — two-time defending champion, out since his Vuelta crash
Top contenders	Remco Evenepoel, Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert, Isaac del Toro, Paul Seixas (19), Tom Pidcock, Quinn Simmons
The lesson	This race has one more variable than the women’s did: a third climb nobody’s calibrated for. It already put a Grand Tour podium finisher on the brink of cracking three weeks ago.

Why There’s a Third Climb Now

Every course guide we’ve written about Montreal, including our own, has covered Camillien-Houde and the Polytechnique’s pitches in full — gradient by gradient, if you want the reference numbers. What’s specific to Sunday is that both climbs sit behind 110km of flat racing through Montérégie before the circuit even starts, so the men arrive at the first ascent of Camillien-Houde with roughly three hours already spent, a cost the women’s race, which starts straight into its eight laps, never had to carry. One correction on top of that: our September 13 guide listed the elite men’s race at 273.2km with 3,720m of gain, based on the course figures available then. Montréal 2026 has since finalized the route at 273.7km and 3,803m — the numbers used throughout this post — so use these as the current figures for the men’s race. But there’s a third rise worth naming specifically for Sunday, because it already decided a race on this exact circuit three weeks ago — Côte Pagnuelo, a shorter, steeper kick arriving on legs that have already spent three hours getting there.

We watched it matter at GP Montréal, the dress-rehearsal race on this identical loop. Isaac del Toro was on the brink of cracking on Pagnuelo’s steepest pitches, four kilometers from the line, before finding a sprint nobody watching expected. That happened on the 16th ascent of the day. The elite men only get 12 trips up it Sunday — fewer reps, but the same climb, on legs that will have already covered 110km of flat before the circuit even starts. Pagnuelo doesn’t get talked about the way Camillien-Houde does. It should.

Who Are the Favorites for the 2026 Worlds Men’s Road Race?

With Pogačar out, no rider enters Sunday with a result on this circuit that settles anything. Here’s the shape of the contenders’ group, roughly in order of how directly each name can answer “how do you actually win this”:

1. Remco Evenepoel — the 2022 world champion, and the rider who’s arguably had the best two weeks of anyone in Montreal. He won GP Québec on September 11, then led every single split of Sunday’s time trial for his fourth straight Worlds ITT title, a record nobody else in the sport holds. Nothing about that says he can’t also win off a 12-lap circuit that rewards a rider willing to commit to a long-range move and never look back.
2. Isaac del Toro — the only rider in this field who’s already won on this exact course. His GP Montréal victory came from nearly cracking on Pagnuelo and finding a finish anyway, which is either the best possible preparation for Sunday or a warning that even the strongest rider here has a limit this circuit can find.
3. Paul Seixas — 19 years old, and already the rider who matched del Toro up the hardest climb at GP Montréal before losing only the sprint. He backed that up with TT bronze in Montreal on Sunday, two months after finishing fourth in his Tour de France debut. Nobody his age has looked this comfortable on a circuit built to punish inexperience.
4. Mathieu van der Poel — too dangerous in any select group to leave unmarked, even on a course with more total climbing than usually suits him. If the front group is still ten-deep with two laps to go, he’s the rider everyone else needs to isolate first.
5. Wout van Aert — sharing Belgian leadership with Evenepoel, which is either a huge tactical asset or a problem nobody’s solved yet. He arrives with the Vuelta a España green jersey, two stage wins, and the race’s overall combativity award — proof of form, not proof Belgium has figured out who rides for whom.
6. Tom Pidcock — punchy enough for a circuit built on repeated short climbs, without the “already won here” case Evenepoel, del Toro, and Seixas can all point to.
7. Quinn Simmons — three-time U.S. road race champion, riding into Worlds off a fourth-place finish at GP Montréal on this identical circuit. That result says he can still be competitive deep into a hard afternoon here, and it means an aggressive move from Simmons has to be taken seriously rather than covered as a formality.

That’s seven riders with a real answer to “why you,” and it doesn’t include Roglič, riding for a Slovenian team that lost its captain and hasn’t fully settled who it’s riding for.

The Variable Nobody’s Priced Correctly

We wrote yesterday about the women’s race working through a related problem — no singular favorite, several riders who could each credibly win. But that race was decided on two climbs riders have raced enough times to know their cost. Camillien-Houde and Polytechnique have been part of enough editions of this circuit that a rider can budget for them with real confidence: roughly this many matches, spent roughly here, for roughly this return. Pagnuelo doesn’t have that history. It has one data point — GP Montréal, 16 ascents deep, when it put Isaac del Toro on the brink of cracking — and Sunday changes both halves of that equation at once. The men’s race only climbs it 12 times, not 16, but it arrives there after 110km of flat riding the GP Montréal field never had to absorb first.

Nobody in Sunday’s front group actually knows which way that trade nets out. Fewer reps up Pagnuelo could mean it costs less than it did at GP Montréal. Nearly three extra hours of racing before the legs even see it for the first time could mean it costs more. A rider deciding how hard to commit on Camillien-Houde is negotiating with a number they understand. A rider deciding the same thing on Pagnuelo is negotiating with a number nobody in the peloton has actually measured — which means the rider who guesses closest to Pagnuelo’s real cost, not the rider with the best legs, is the one most likely to still have something left when it matters.

What Racing Without a Favorite Actually Rewards

Here’s the part of this that matters beyond Sunday. A wide-open field doesn’t reward whoever has the best legs in the group — it rewards whoever’s willing to decide the race is on before anyone else agrees with them. That’s a harder skill to train than raw power, and it’s the same skill amateur riders need in a club race or a local series where nobody’s quite sure who the strongest rider actually is. Waiting for someone else to make the race happen is the losing plan when nobody else is going to do it first, either.

A Test for Whether You’d Have Anything Left for Pagnuelo

The number that actually matters Sunday isn’t how hard anyone can hit Pagnuelo fresh. It’s whether they can still produce power there after three hours of racing without it costing more than it should. You can test that same gap in your own legs with a decoupling check instead of a set of repeated efforts.

Warm-up: 15 minutes easy, building gradually into the main effort rather than a separate block.

Main effort: 90 minutes continuous at 75-80% FTP (RPE 5-6/10) on a route or trainer profile that lets you hold steady output — no coasting, no surges, just sustained work. Record power and heart rate the entire time.

Finishing effort: Immediately after the 90 minutes, without stopping, hold 100-105% FTP (RPE 8/10) for 4 minutes.

Cool-down: 10-15 minutes easy.

Total time: roughly two hours.

The test: Split your power file into the first 45 minutes and the last 45 minutes of the sustained block, and compare your average heart rate at matched power in each half. A meaningful rise in heart rate for the same power in the second half is cardiac decoupling — your legs producing the same wattage for a higher physiological cost. Then look at the finishing effort itself: if that 4-minute number is well short of what you’d hold fresh, you’ve just felt what Pagnuelo does to a field that’s already decoupling by the time it arrives. The climb doesn’t test raw power. It tests what raw power costs you three hours in. Retest your FTP if it’s more than six or eight weeks old before trusting any of these numbers against your own legs.

What to Watch For Sunday

1. Whether Belgium rides as one team or two. Van Aert and Evenepoel both have a real case to win. Whether they ride for each other or against each other by lap 8 says more about the result than either rider’s individual form.
2. How Seixas handles a fourth straight day of Worlds-level effort at 19. He’s already matched the best rider on this circuit up its hardest climb and taken a TT bronze medal. A road race this long, on legs this fresh into a senior career, is still a different question.
3. Whether Pagnuelo, not Camillien-Houde, is where the race actually breaks. It did at GP Montréal. Twelve laps instead of sixteen, plus 110km of flat racing beforehand, changes the math on when riders start running out of matches for it.

The Bottom Line

Pogačar’s absence didn’t just remove a favorite. It removed the one rider whose presence used to answer every tactical question for everyone else before the race even started. What’s left is seven or eight riders who each have a real, specific reason to believe Sunday is winnable, and a course with three separate climbs instead of the two we’ve been writing about all month — one of which has already shown it can put a Grand Tour podium finisher on the brink of cracking with the finish line in sight. That’s not a harder race to win than the ones Pogačar used to dominate. It’s a harder race to predict, which is a different thing entirely, and the actual reason this is the most genuinely open men’s Worlds road race in years.

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Course distance, elevation, start and finish details from Montréal 2026’s official Elite Men’s Road Race page. Favorites analysis informed by Cyclingnews’s contenders breakdown. Van Aert’s Vuelta a España green jersey, stage wins, and combativity award from ProCyclingUK and CyclingUpToDate. Quinn Simmons’s national title and GP Montréal result from FloBikes. Training targets are estimates based on power-based training principles. Adjust for your own tested FTP and conditions.