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PREVIEW: 2017 World Road Race Championships

The UCI Road Race World Championships are taking place in Bergen, Norway

The 2017 UCI Road Race World Championships takes place in Bergen this weekend, aptly named “the Gateway to the Fjords of Norway”

The road races are built around the same circuit in Bergen for both the men's and women's road race. The races start in Rong, north west of Bergen. Riders will descend south across a chain of islands which includes the magnificent kilometre-long Sotra suspension bridge for 40 kms.

PREVIEW: 2017 World Road Race Championships

The finishing circuit in Bergen contains one single climb of Salmon Hill, which is only 1.5 kms at an average 6.4%. However the 277 kms men's road race will climb this 11 times, so it will be much tougher later on and will provide the natural selection in the peloton. The 153 km women's race will go up the climb 8 times.

The 19.1km urban circuit will have a spring Classics feel to it, suiting a huge number of riders and making it difficult to predict the tatics that will be used by the teams and the eventual winner.

In total, the men's race will include 3,800 metres of climbing, similar to a Grand Tour stage, however the distance at the Worlds is much longer than your average stage, to win the rainbow jersey in Bergen, you have got to have climbing legs.

PREVIEW: 2017 World Road Race Championships

Dates and Times

Women’s Elite: Saturday 23 September

07:30 - 11:30 Eastern US, 12:30 - 16.30 UK, and 13.30 – 17.30 Europe

Men’s Elite: Sunday 24 September

04:05 - 10:45 Eastern US, 9:05 - 15:45 UK and 10.05 – 16.45 Europe

Men’s Favorites

Without doubt the pre-race favorite is reigning champion Peter Sagan who won in in 2015 and 2016. Greg Van Avermaet is another favorite as well as 2014 world champion Michal Kwiatkowski.

Norweigen's Alexander Kristoff and Edvald Boasson Hagen are favorites to take a home win. Kristoff won the points competition at the Tour of Britain recently and Edvald Boasson Hagen soloed to a stage win too.

Michael Matthews is another pre-race favorite as well as previous world champions Rui Costa and the Philippe Gilbert.

And for the U23 men, Americans will be watching to see if Brandon McNulty will be able to defend his title.

Women’s Favorites

The women's field contains a super strong line up of women coming to the end of their most successful season.

Reigning champion Amalie Dideriksen isn’t going to let the jersey go easily. The Dutch team is the strongest with two times World Champion Marianne Vos, Annemiek van Vlueten, Anna van der Breggen and Ellen van Dijk.

They face tough competition from previous world champions Lizzie Armitstead and Giorgia Bronzini. Great Britain's Lizzie Armitstead is considered an outsider after her recent appendix operation.

The USA's Coryn Rivera, who won Flanders and the London Classique this season, thinks it’s a course that suits her and has compatriot Megan Guarnier for company.

PREVIEW: 2017 World Road Race Championships