2021 Road World Championships – Wout van Aert and Lotte Kopecky to lead Belgium in bid for home Flanders wins

Wout van Aert and Lotte Kopecky will lead Belgium at their home 2021 Road World Championships in Flanders.

Belgium will be bidding for home victory in the road races on September 25 and 26 with two strong teams selected.

Remco Evenepoel is the headline name in a men’s team containing some of the World Tour peloton’s finest classicists.

There is no place, however, for either Philippe Gilbert or Greg van Avermaet.

Olympic silver medallist Van Aert will be bidding for a first rainbow jersey in the road race for Belgium since Gilbert took victory in 2012.

Fast-finishing Kopecky, meanwhile, returns to the road race at a world championships for the first time since Doha in 2016.

Shari Bossuyt, Kim de Baat, Valerie Demey, Jolie D’Hoore and Jessie Vandenbulcke will support Kopecky, who was fourth in the road race at the Olympics.

She finished second behind Marianne Vos at Gent-Wevelgem in Flanders earlier in 2021 and has signed for SD Worx from next season.

Belgium won the last of their women’s road race titles in 1973 (Nicole Vandenbroeck) after dominating the early years of the competition.

The male team is completed by Tiesj Benoot, Victor Campenaerts, Tim Declercq, Yves Lampaert, Jasper Stuyven and Dylan Teuns.

Van Aert and Evenpoel will also compete in the time trial and both could contend.

Julie Van de Velde has been confirmed as the first of two riders for the women’s time trial, with a second to be announced after the European Road Championships.

The team time trial mixed relay will be contested by Campenaerts, Lampaert, Ben Hermans, Kopecky, Bossuyt and D’Hoore.

The two elite road races begin in Antwerp and finish in Leuven.

The women will compete over 157.7 kilometres on 25 September before the men’s race is contested over 267.7km a day later.

All of the time trial events, which precede the road race programme, finish in Bruges.