A Phoenix native just rewrote American cycling history. Brandon McNulty launched a solo attack with 32 kilometers left in the 273.4-kilometer elite men's road race at the 2026 UCI Road World Championships in Montreal on Sunday, holding off a hard-charging chase group to win by 13 seconds.
McNulty crossed the line ahead of silver medalist Michael Matthews of Australia and bronze medalist Mathieu van der Poel of the Netherlands, according to Outside Magazine. His gap shrank to roughly 10 seconds on the final climb before he managed to re-extend his lead through the flat finish, per the same report. As Arizona's Family reported, the win made McNulty the first American man to claim the elite road race world title in 33 years.
That drought traces back to Lance Armstrong's 1993 victory in Oslo. McNulty is now only the third American man ever to win the UCI Elite Men's Road Race World Championship, joining Armstrong and two-time champion Greg LeMond, who won in 1983 and 1989, according to NBC Sports. No U.S. male rider had even medaled in the event since Armstrong's win more than three decades ago.
A Brutal Course Through Montreal
The championship route ran 273.4 kilometers between Brossard and Montreal, looping 12 times around the Mont-Royal circuit for more than 3,500 meters of cumulative elevation gain, according to USA Cycling. The repeated climbs up the Voie Camillien-Houde, which averages a 7.4% gradient, wore down the field over the course of the race.
Team USA didn't just win the top step; the squad placed three riders in the top eight overall. Quinn Simmons finished fourth, and Matteo Jorgenson placed eighth after actively disrupting chase attempts in the closing laps, the report notes. The eight-rider American team spent the race neutralizing attacks from Belgian and French contenders, clearing the path for McNulty's late move.
From Pogačar's Lieutenant to World Champion
McNulty rides professionally for WorldTeam UAE Team Emirates-XRG, where he typically works as a mountain lieutenant for superstar Tadej Pogačar. Pogačar missed the 2026 World Championships due to injuries from a crash at the Vuelta a España, according to Cyclingnews. McNulty had won the 2025 Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal alongside Pogačar on similar roads the year before, a pairing that made Sunday's solo triumph without his star teammate especially notable.
Former professional cycling team director Johan Bruyneel offered tactical analysis of why the late break worked, noting that McNulty maintained steady power output while chasers suffered cumulative fatigue and hesitation over 270 kilometers, according to CyclingUpToDate.com. McNulty attacked during a momentary lull in the chase group, building a lead of over a minute before carefully managing his pace up Mont-Royal.
Phoenix Roots and a Decade in the Making
Born in Phoenix in 1998, McNulty was introduced to mountain biking by his father at age eight before transitioning to road racing as a pre-teen, according to ProCyclingUK. He later used Phoenix's extreme summer heat for specialized climate conditioning, even hosting fellow U.S. junior riders at his Phoenix home so they could train in the high temperatures ahead of early international competitions.
Exactly ten years before this world title, McNulty won the Junior Men's Individual Time Trial World Championship in Doha, Qatar, in October 2016, beating Denmark's Mikkel Bjerg by 35 seconds, according to USA Cycling. Sunday's win marked his 23rd professional career victory, following individual stage wins at the Giro d'Italia in 2023 and the Vuelta a España in 2024, as well as back-to-back U.S. national time trial championships in those same two years, per Tour Magazin.
McNulty has also represented Team USA at the Olympics, placing sixth in the road race at Tokyo 2020 and fifth in the individual time trial at Paris 2024, per NBC Sports. At Tokyo, he was in medal contention before getting dropped on the final climb by gold medalist Richard Carapaz, underscoring just how much of a breakthrough Sunday's solo win in Montreal represents for the Phoenix rider.
