UCI road world championships course: Road Circuit
Get familiar with the course of this weekend's road racing events at the UCI road world championships in Richmond, Virginia.
QUICK FACTS:
Course: Bumpy, tight and technical.
Lap distance: 16.2 kilometres.
Elevation change: 103 metres.
The time trial competition at the UCI road world championships in Richmond Virginia is finished, and now it’s time for the main event. Yesterday, training rides gave competing riders a pre-race taste of the Richmond course — all 16.2 km of lap distance and 103 metres of elevation change. Today, beginning with the Junior women’s race, they leave it all out on the road.
Competition, the UCI website describes, happens on a “challenging, technical and inner-city road circuit,” a strip marked with a bumpy cobblestone surface and hairpin turns followed by hard climbs.
No matter which classification is racing, it will make a podium-worthy performance tough.
Competition kicks off in downtown Richmond, heading westbound toward Monument Avenue — an artery described as one of the “10 Great Streets in America.” Here, one of the first of those tight, high-speed turns takes cyclists in a dizzying 180-degree loop near the Jefferson Davis monument. From there, riders head through the city’s uptown district, a route maneuvering them through the environs of Virginia Commonwealth University.
At this point, the race hits the halfway point of the course, before descending toward Shockoe Bottom, skirting the Kanawha Canal, and passing the Virginia Capital Trail start point at Great Shiplock Park. With the cobblestone stretch of the course, this is where a particular type of fun begins for competing riders. The peloton takes an off-camber turn at Rocketts Landing, ascending 200 metres of that narrow, winding cobblestone stretch towards Libby Hill Park, the heart of Richmond’s historic Church Hill neighbourhood. Then there’s a quick, coasting descent, but almost immediately thereafter, it’s back into the grind, with three tricky turns preceding another 100-metre climb toward 23rd Street.
At each lap, the course plateaus at this point briefly, before one last drop back to Shockoe Bottom to build momentum for a 300-metre finishing climb up Governor Street. With that haul behind them, a 680-metre stretch waits at the top, leading the pack to the finish.
The route of the Junior women’s class is 64.9 km, the Junior men’s 129.8 km, and the U23 men’s 162.2 km. For the Elite women and men, meanwhile, it’s a 129.8 km and a 261.4 km haul, respectively.
Further information about the Richmond road circuit course is available in PDF form via the Richmond 2015 website.
