World Championship rider ratings: Five-star Wout Van Aert hoping for no rogue Remco Evenepoel in road race

It's the big one. The last big one of the season, at any rate. The World Championship road race means the opportunity to sport the iconic rainbow bands for an entire season, and a rainbow trim on every jersey worn for the rest of their career.

Wherever it takes place, the circuit setup means it is a race that tends to follow a particular formula. The excitement builds with every passage of the finish line, while riders pull out as their day's work is done. Ad The men's course in Wollongong comprises a 60km run-in via Mount Keira (7.5km, 5.7% average gradient) followed by 12 laps around the city.

The climbing (4000m in total) is a lot, and sure to eat into the riders reserves. This more than usual could be a year that favours the bigger (stronger, faster, better) teams, with the first name on our lips likely the main beneficiary. World Championships'We want to win' — Van Aert and Evenepoel insist they are on same pageA DAY AGO ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — WOUT VAN AERT Despite being our only five-star option, if we could make him a four-and-a-half star, we probably would.

Not because Van Aert is less than a five-star rider — if anything, he’s a six — but because it’s been a long, hard season for him and it looks like he needs less to recharge his batteries than replace them entirely. Nowhere did that show more than in the GP de Montreal two weeks ago. Arriving at the finish last he lacked the top end speed to push past a Tadej Pogacar on a mission.

That said, more than Montreal, this is a course that suits him down to the ground and the rainbows really should be his to lose. The only real question is whether his Belgian team-mates can manage to maintain a discipline that was missing last year in Flanders. Pogacar: Dropping Van Aert or Van der