At time of writing tickets remained for some, but not all, of the ticketed sessions across the championships. Road racing, as always, is free to watch across the routes. See the event website, cyclingworldchamps.com, for information on how to buy. Sportive Breaks (sportivebreaks. com) is an official travel partner, with hospitality and gran fondo packages available to book.
On TV The BBC has covered the road and track world championships for years and will again cover the 2023 Worlds, across TV, online and social.
more kudus than the Olympics. Undoubtedly, the rainbow jersey – worn by the winner for the next 12 months unless they’re wearing the leader’s jersey of any given race – has much to do with that. It’s a garment, however, that’s as magnificent as it can be malevolent, with it affording its owner a respect within the peloton akin to the Tour’s yellow jersey, at the same time as it being seen as somewhat cursed. “You do have a lot of pressure with the jersey: you’re almost representing cycling” says Gilbert, who endured a near barren 2013 following his Worlds win. “Even when training, you stop for coffee and everyone is staring at you, taking pictures. Sometimes that’s hard, and you need a rest. I was living in Monaco, around lots of other pro cyclists. They see what you’re doing, so it’s always pressure.”
It’s similar in mountain biking, says McLaughlin. “In XC [cross-country] the jersey carries huge weight and in Downhill it can be a bit of an albatross. I recently interviewed 2020 UCI Mountain Bike Downhill World Champion Reece Wilson, who won his stripes before winning a UCI World Cup. He said that first subsequent World Cup win validated his World title. It’s a tough thing to win but a tougher thing to live up to.”
Riders who don’t have to worry about the curse of the rainbow jersey are the members of Great Britain’s men’s cycle-ball team. The vagaries of the competition in Glasgow mean that the teams in group B (which they will be in, should they meet British Cycling’s performance threshold to take part) can, at best, get into a play-off with the bottom team in group A for a place in the following year’s Worlds top group. None of this, even, is particularly relevant to the British team, for whom simply making it to Glasgow will be an underdog story up there with the likes of the Jamaican bobsleigh team. Cycle-ball, for the unin
