Taylor Knibb finished 13th on her UCI Road World Championships debut in Montreal on Sunday – just eight days after producing a dominant performance to win her fourth IRONMAN 70.3 world title.

The American stopped the clock in 52:43 over the 39.9km course, finishing 2:19 behind Switzerland’s Marlen Reusser as the defending champion successfully retained her rainbow jersey.

Knibb was the leading American by a considerable margin, beating Olympic road race champion Kristen Faulkner by 1:22.

Britain’s Zoe Bäckstedt claimed the silver medal, 40 seconds behind Reusser, while Germany’s Franziska Koch completed the podium after finishing a further five seconds adrift.

Knibb sets early benchmark

Knibb was only the 18th rider of 47 scheduled to leave the start ramp and therefore faced a long wait before discovering her final position.

But she immediately demonstrated that her extraordinary bike performance in Nice had taken relatively little out of her.

Knibb set the fastest time by 16 seconds at the opening intermediate check among the riders to have started and then moved into the provisional lead when she reached the finish.

That put her into the hot seat as the later starters began their attempts to overhaul her time.

Knibb was ultimately pushed down to 16th at the opening checkpoint, 42 seconds behind the flying Bäckstedt, who produced the fastest opening section of the entire field.

The triathlon superstar star improved to 14th at the second check, where she trailed Bäckstedt by 1:05, and retained that position at the third split.

By then Reusser had taken control of the race, moving 14 seconds ahead of Bäckstedt, with Knibb 1:36 behind the Swiss defending champion.

Knibb produced a strong finish to gain another position over the closing section. She edged past Australia’s Lauretta Hanson by a single second to secure 13th place.

Her performance also compared impressively with Faulkner. Knibb was 26 seconds ahead of her US teammate at the first checkpoint, extended that advantage to 50 seconds at the second and eventually finished 1:22 clear, doing her chances of again representing the USA at LA2028 no harm at all. She raced both the TT and triathlon at the Paris Olympics in 2024, finishing 19th in the pure cycling discipline in treacherous conditions before anchoring the USA to the silver medal in a thrilling swim / bike / run Mixed Team Relay.

From Nice to Montreal

The result came only eight days after Knibb dominated the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in Nice.

She emerged with the leaders from the 1.9km swim, destroyed a world-class field on the demanding 90km bike course and then completed a half marathon to regain the title in a course-record 4:19:24.

Knibb averaged 303 watts for approximately 30 minutes on the Col de Vence and set a new record of 29:48 for the long ascent, gaining more than four minutes on her principal rivals during the climb alone.

Even amid the celebrations afterwards, Montreal was already occupying her thoughts.

“Hopefully it’s a good opener for next weekend in Montreal,” she said before identifying her most immediate challenge.

“I just need to get my disc wheels to Montreal. That’s my goal now.”

Those wheels clearly arrived safely – and Knibb demonstrated once again that she can compete with some of the world’s best specialist cyclists.

The two-time US national time trial champion was making her UCI Worlds debut, while fellow triathlete Paula Findlay has also contested the World Championship time trial twice for Canada, finishing 25th in Stirling in 2023 and improving to 18th in Zürich the following year.

Reusser retains world title

At the front of the race, Bäckstedt made a superb start and led at each of the first two completed intermediate checks.

Reusser was 10 seconds behind the Briton at the opening split but had reduced that deficit to only three seconds by the second.

The defending champion then took command, moving 14 seconds ahead at the third checkpoint before extending her winning advantage to 40 seconds at the finish.

Reusser clocked 50:24 to retain the title, with Bäckstedt taking an impressive silver and Koch securing bronze.

Elisa Longo Borghini missed the podium by only five seconds in fourth, while Cédrine Kerbaol rounded out the top five.

Knibb, meanwhile, can now turn her attention back to triathlon and the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, where she will attempt to add a first full-distance crown to another remarkable season.