On Wednesday afternoon, the hardest mixed team relay time trial ever at the World Championships takes place in Zürich.

The event having only been introduced in 2019, you might be thinking ‘what is the mixed team relay time trial?’, ‘I haven’t watched any of the others to compare’, or ‘what’s the point?’, but the event could be one of the most explosive races at the 2024 Worlds. Over 53.6km from Zürich to Zürich, on a loop of the same city course as will be employed in the road races, the teams will need to maintain a tight formation over 894 metres of climbing. It will be fascinating.

Now in its fifth iteration, the rules are pretty simple. Three male riders per country head out first around a course, setting a time, before three compatriot female riders head out on the same route, before the results are combined in a cumulative time. Time is taken on the second rider over the line, and fastest wins. As per any team time trial, dropping riders can be catastrophic if this means the final rider to be counted is far behind the leader on the line.

Team time trials have largely fallen out of fashion in recent years, despite the best efforts of some race organisers, but the mixed relay TTT was an attempt by cycling’s governing body, the UCI, to make the event fun again. The mixed element adds something, and is also a move towards the kinds of mixed events so loved by the IOC at the moment – there are mixed Olympic events in triathlon, swimming, athletics, even archery.

“I’d be amazed if there isn’t [splitting up]. I think there’ll be very few teams that blast up the climbs without splitting up. There are some quite technical bits as well, and a lot of them are on the downhill. It would be an easier circuit the other way round. We’ll certainly see teams breaking up, and with the time taken on the second rider, there will be pretty big decisions about whether you’re waiting for people. It will have to be decided on the road.”

“Better teams will have planned for this in some detail – who’s going to lead on the hills? Who’s going to lead on the flat? Who’s making the decisions? Some will have even [virtually] modelled the course because you can do that and work out what is the optimal configuration of the team for each section of the course. Teams will have worked out what wattage level they will have to set on each part. It’s quite hard to make that happen in real life, but you can at least start off with a very clear idea of what you should do.”

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900 metres of climbing over 53 kilometres: The World Championships mixed team relay will have you on the edge of your seat

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