The Paris Olympics technically start on Friday, although plenty of team events have already gotten underway, and road cycling fans won’t have to wait long to see the stars in action as the men’s and women’s time trials both take place on Saturday, July 27. You can read Abby Mickey’s preview of the women’s TT in her weekly Wheel Talk newsletter.
On the men’s side, we are set to see a new gold medalist as Tokyo Olympic champion Primož Roglič will not make the start. Despite that, plenty of big names will contest the title, and it should be an intriguing battle. There are three main favorites for gold and any one of them could emerge victorious, and there are a few outsiders who could surprise as well. Here’s what you need to know about the men’s individual time trial at the 2024 Olympic Games.
How to watch
Racing gets underway at 16:30CET / 10:30 EST / 00:30 AEST (Sunday)
Streaming: 🇺🇸 NBC/Peacock, 🇬🇧 BBC/discovery+, 🇪🇺 Eurosport/discovery+, 🇦🇺 Nine Network, 🇨🇦 CBC/Fubo
The route
Both the men and the women will race the same route for the time trial at the Paris Olympics, a 32.4 km course that starts on the Hôtel des Invalides’s esplanade before heading east through the city to a loop mostly within the 12th arrondissement in the Bois de Vincennes, the largest public park in the city. It will be a very flat journey to the finish, just on the other side of the Pont Alexandre III from the start.
Although the race will take riders on urban roads, it’s not all that heavy on tight corners either. All told, it should make for a very, very fast TT that will favor the pure power riders. Kilos won’t matter all that much; watts will rule the day.
The three favorites
You may be surprised to know that Joshua Tarling (Great Britain) is the bookies’ favorite in his very first Olympic time trial, with Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) and Filippo Ganna (Italy) likely to be his biggest rivals. Somewhat unusually for a time trial, where surprises are rare, it’s hard to say who will come out on top.
Tarling’s track record is just so short – he’s only 20 years old, after all – that it’s hard to be completely confident in him as a favorite, but he’s certainly no slouch, having scored a bronze medal at last year’s world championships. Crucially, the pan-flat profile suits him well, especially compared to Evenepoel. Assumedly he will bring good form to Paris, which is a major goal for him, but it was more than a month ago that he won the British national championships, making it tough to say for certain.
Evenepoel, for his part, is coming off of the Tour de France. It won’t be easy for him to hold his GC podium form for too much longer, but only a week removed from the Tour finale, he should still be in good shape. He also has the edge of experience over Tarling, having raced an Olympic TT before (albeit to a disappointing ninth place). Compared to the rest of the Olympic field, he would probably prefer a course with some climbs, but he is the world champion in the discipline, and very much a potential winner on flat roads.
Ganna will also shine on the flatter roads, and he is fully focused on his Olympic goals, though those also include the pursuit of a gold medal on the track. Ganna has not been quite as dominant in the years since he took his second world TT title (in 2021), but he has generally been a consistent contender almost every time he goes up against the clock, rarely finishing far off from the win.
The outsiders
Wout van Aert headlines the rest of the field, and the Belgian is sort of a wildcard for the TT given the question marks around his form and, in a way, his motivation, seeing as the road race is probably a bigger goal. Van Aert has twice been a runner-up at Worlds and he has won multiple time trials at the Tour de France, but he has also had a challenging 2024 campaign, mostly thanks to his crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen and the lengthy recovery period from the injuries he sustained there. He was not in contention in either of the time trials in this year’s Tour, clearly disinterested in even trying to win the second one. Still, no one will be all that surprised if he wins.
Four other outsiders stand out, half of them from the United States and the other half from Switzerland. Brandon McNulty has taken a step forward in the TTs over the past few seasons, and he has won two at the WorldTour level this year. Magnus Sheffield has not been a contender in top-tier TTs for as long, but he did finish just behind McNulty in the Tour de Romandie, and he was in flying form at the Tour of Austria earlier this month.
Stefan Küng and Stefan Bissegger are also dark horses for gold. Küng missed out on a medal in Tokyo by less than one second, and he is a big rider who loves a pan-flat course. Bissegger is a bit more of an unknown given his relatively quiet 2024 campaign, and he is a rider who tends to run hot and cold. It wouldn’t be a total shock to see him medal but it also wouldn’t be a total shock if he finished outside of the top 10.
Ethan Hayter (Great Britain), Tobias Foss (Norway), Luke Plapp (Australia), and Mikkel Bjerg (Denmark) are the other riders to watch on the roads of Paris this Saturday.
Star ratings
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Josh Tarling, Remco Evenepoel, Filippo Ganna
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: N/A
⭐️⭐️⭐️: Wout van Aert
⭐️⭐️: Stefan Küng, Brandon McNulty, Stefan Bissegger, Magnus Sheffield
⭐️: Ethan Hayter, Tobias Foss, Luke Plapp, Mikkel Bjerg
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