These are the new Road National Champions 2023

The weekend before the start of the Tour de France is the one reserved by the UCI for the national road cycling championships. These events entitle the winners to wear the colors of their country on their jersey until the next championship. These colors give great visibility to the winning riders. These are the most relevant winners of the weekend.

A review of the results of the main national road championships 2023

Intense weekend in which countless national champion jerseys have been at stake in the vast majority of countries affiliated to the UCI, since this is the weekend that the highest cycling body reserves for these events. Only some countries, such as the South American countries, move the competition to the southern summer, taking advantage of the fact that most of the stars are in the preseason preparing for the race in their country.

In Spain, Oier Lazkano took a fabulous victory. A result not so surprising given the form he had been showing and the numerical majority of Movistar Team but that, in any case, left the top favorite, Juan Ayuso, with the honey on his lips.

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Some championships are always tremendously attractive because of the level of their participants. Such is the case of Belgium, in a race that was marked by a quality breakaway led by Wout van Aert. However, they would be caught in the last lap and, when everything seemed destined to be resolved in a mass sprint, Remco Evenepoel gave us one of his exhibitions and managed to open a gap with the only company of Lotto-Dstny rider Alec Segaert, who could do nothing against the World Champion in the final stage.

The Netherlands is another place where the level of its championships is close to stratospheric. However, Dylan van Baarle's ride was enough to seal his victory in the Dutch race without his pursuers Olav Kooij and Mathieu van der Poel being able to do anything to catch him. Both completed the podium in that order.

There was concern about Tadej Pogacar's return to competition after the hand injury suffered during Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The conclusion is that the Slovenian is in perfect condition to face the Tour de France, not only because of his victory in the race but also because of the more than 5 minutes he beat the second-placed rider a few days earlier in the time trial. By the way, a discipline that left us with the curious image of him and Urska Zigart taking the gold medals, everything stays at home.

Movistar did not only shine in Spain. The jersey of the telephone company also stood out on the podium in Austria thanks to the triumph of Gregor Muhlberger. However, if we have to talk about the dominance of a team, we have to travel to Germany, where Bora-Hansgrohe took the national podium with Buchmann, Denz and Schachmann in that order.

The favorite rider of the fans during the last months, the unclassifiable Ben Healy, won the Irish championship, while in France, another of the races that usually goes head to head because of the prestige of this victory in this country, went to Valentin Madouas in what is the most important victory of his career, after successfully carrying out an attack with 20 kilometers to go.

Quinn Simmons won in the United States and in Italy, once a very high level event, the victory went to Simone Velasco after winning a reduced sprint of three riders who came out on top.

We end with the bittersweet farewell to the championships of Peter Sagan who, despite arriving at the final part in an unbeatable position to compete in a reduced bunch sprint, a situation in which not so long ago he would have been unbeatable, had to settle for second place after being beaten by the young rider of the ATT Investments continental team, Matus Stocek.