Rainbow tears. Brandon McNulty has won the 2026 World Championships

The image of joy is a distraught, tear-streaked, bewildered face. On the podium at the 2026 World Cycling Championships, Brandon McNulty’s face was a mask of astonishment, his body shifting as he sought an explanation for what had happened just moments before. Once the gold medal hung around his neck and he donned the white jersey with rainbow stripes across the chest, a broad smile finally spread across his face. At that moment, Brandon McNulty realised he had been crowned world cycling champion and would carry that jersey across the globe for the ensuing twelve months.

Brandon McNulty deserved that look of amazement and that smile. He earned it because, in a World Championship that was excellent, spectacular, disjointed and, at times, excessive, he managed to seize the right moment – the one that allowed him to set himself apart from the confusion of too many aspirations to win and too many talented riders. Thirty-three kilometres of solitude at the front of the pack, many of which were spent whilst most believed – though certainly not him – that a single burst of speed would be enough to catch him. Good intentions are of no use unless they are put into practice. Brandon McNulty was action, not intention. A surge and a simple message to everyone: now come and catch me. No one managed it.

And no one managed it, thanks in part to the excellent work of Mateo Jorgenson, his rival throughout the year and team-mate at the World Championships. The American from Team Visma chased down everyone, settling on the wheel of anyone who tried to chase his compatriot. He quashed any sense of excitement.

Brandon McNulty has won a marvellous, thrilling World Championship, one that remained in the balance right to the end.

A World Championship that should have crowned Mathieu van der Poel as Best Actor, joint with the American. The Dutch champion shook up the race with an attack ninety-nine kilometres from the finish, and tried to turn it on its head with Wout van Aert ninety-one kilometres from the line. At one point the Belgian gave up (sacrificing himself in an attempt to rouse a slumbering Remco Evenepoel), but the Dutchman did not. He finished the race in third place on a course that seemed too gruelling for him. His talent, however, is capable of overshadowing the metres of elevation gain. Between the first breakaway and the final sprint for second place (won by Michael Matthews, who was also exceptional in ensuring he was among the leaders), he managed to lay bare all the talent and limitations in race management of Isaac Del Toro and Paul Seixas. The Dutchman was a demiurge, the creator of chaos.

And just like McNulty and van der Poel, the award for Best Leading Actor should also go to the Montréal circuit, which has continually shaken up the plot of these World Cycling Championships. Tough, but not excessively so; extremely complex; full of gaps – the sort that the cyclists’ imagination manages to fill. This is the World Championship route that takes centre stage every September at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal. It’s just that the preconception that leads people to regard North American races as second-rate often prevents us from truly appreciating it. This is despite the fact that the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal has, in recent seasons, been one of the most interesting races of the year. It deserved a better stage. It got it at the World Championships.

They’ll say: yes, but Tadej Pogacar wasn’t there. Those who are present are in the right; those who are absent are in the wrong. Brandon McNulty won – a rider far too polite and too kind to make his voice heard. He made his voice heard in Canada. He looked at his jersey, and the tears stopped flowing.