New Santini Collection Honors Centennial Road World Championships
2021 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the UCI Road World Championships and what more fitting place could there be to hold the centennial event than in Flanders?
An Iconic World Championships For The Centennial
Since the first UCI Road World Championship in 1921 (held in Copenhagen), Belgium has hosted the Road World Championships a total of nine times. Six of those events have been held in the iconic Flanders region. For 2021, the UCI Road World Championships return to the Flanders region for what promises to be a world championship as iconic as the classics held on the very same roads.
From September 18-26th, the cobbled terrain in and around Antwerp, Bruges, Leuven, and Knokke-Heist will host time trials and road races for Juniors, Under-23, and Elite men and women. Eleven champions will be crowned in all.
With the promise of a classics-style World Championships, the Flanders parcourse has drawn keen interest from cycling’s one-day specialists.
Reigning world champion Julian Alaphilippe told Cycling Weekly early this year “The World Championship race in Belgium will be fantastic. We hope by then to be back to normal and that there will be the public on the side of the road.”
Santini-sponsored Trek Segafredo contains numerous hopefuls for worlds, especially after Ruth Winder and Jasper Stuyven both scored classic-season wins this spring (Brabantse Pijl for Winder and Milan Sanremo for Stuyven).
Defending women’s double world-champion (2020 time trial and road world champion) Anna van der Breggen (nicknamed Queen of the Ardennes for winning Amstel Gold, La Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege all in the same season) is a clear favorite to repeat, even as she winds down her career in 2022.
The heat of anticipation will certainly burn brightest on Belgian’s home-grown cycling superstars though. "I’ll have three periods where I want to be in my best shape,” Wout Van Aert told Belgian television channel RTBF at the beginning of the season. “But if I have to choose one goal, I’d pick the World Championships in Belgium in Leuven”.
No matter the outcomes or the winners, 2021 Worlds promises to be a spectacle worthy of the rainbow stripes’ storied one-hundred-year history.
Santini Launches Inspired Collection For Flanders Worlds
Inspired by the 2021 Flanders UCI Road World Championships, Santini, in partnership with the UCI, has developed a capsule collection to celebrate the event.
The collection includes bibs and jerseys for men and women in a one-off Flanders World Championships design, as well as complementary accessories and casual apparel. The collection will be available at select retailers.