Taking part in any World Championships always has a special attraction for its participants, but for Brandon McNulty, riding the men’s time trial as American national time trial champion this year will make the 2023 Worlds particularly special.
Back in racing at the Tour de Pologne after a gap of just over a month, McNulty has a more than distinguished palmares in Worlds TTs, being junior world champion in 2016, silver in the U-23 TT in 2017 and bronze in the same event in 2019.
As McNulty sees it, having achieved one big season goal of getting a Grand Tour stage win at the Giro d’Italia in May and then taking the American time trial national title as well, as he told Cyclingnews ‘anything from now on is a bonus.’
Covering 47 kilometres in the Worlds is something of a voyage in the dark, he recognises, given the last time he rode such a long distance was way back in 2021, in the same event. But on the plus side, McNulty says, he’s feeling refreshed and motivated and the Tour de Pologne should be the ideal build-up race for Scotland in August as well.
“I had a good time at home, a nice reset mentally, I’m excited to be back racing, and hopefully this will be a good week into the Worlds to set me up well,” he told Cyclingnews before stage 2 of the Tour de Pologne.
“Honestly I’ve not looked into the TT course much yet, I know it’s got some hills and has an uphill finish, so it’ll be hard. But I’m excited for it.”
Pologne has its own time trial, of course on stage 6, but even if the 16.6-kilometre course in Katowice is way shorter than what he’ll face on August 11th in the UK, McNulty says it’ll be good to get back into shape for that.
“It’s a completely different kind of effort on Thursday, this one here will be less than 20 minutes, and the Worlds will take an hour.”
“But you’ll still have to do the warmup and get into the same mindset. Just getting on a time trial bike in a race is always good.”
“The last time I did a time trial as long as Scotland would be in the Worlds in Flanders. But I’ll get through ok, for sure.”
While his initial aim in the Worlds TT is a top 10 finish - “that would be an exceptional day” - he points to a broad range of potential candidates for the win: [Tobias] Foss, [Filippo] Ganna, Remco Evenepoel, maybe Geraint Thomas if he’s going well. I don’t know if I can see them as rivals, or if if they’re guys I’ll just try to be close to.”
Having the American time trial champion’s jersey already in his palmares is already a landmark success this year, and will act as a boost to his morale too, come August - and likely every TT he takes part in for the next ten months.
“It’s one I wanted since I turned pro, so being able to come home and knock it out was really nice,” he agrees.
“Then after the Worlds, I have Hamburg, the Deutschland Tour, the races in Canada which will be fun and then the Tour of Luxembourg to end the year.”
“It’s nice to have that kind of relaxed finish, but there will be some opportunities along the way for sure.” Including, of course, one in Scotland in a little less than a fortnight’s time.
