September 27, 2025 - ali (Rwanda), saw two rainbow jerseys awarded: in the Women’s Junior and Women’s Elite road races.
Magdeleine Vallières Mill delivered a thrilling performance in the “land of a thousand hills” to become the first Canadian Elite road race UCI World Champion. The 24-year-old followed the right move and dropped her rivals on the final ascent to take the rainbow jersey ahead of New Zealand’s Niamh Fisher-Black and Spain’s Mavi García.
The Women Elite rainbow jersey was awarded after 11 laps on the 15.1km local circuit, climbing the Côte de Kigali Golf and Côte de Kimihurura, for a total distance of 164.6km with 3,350 metres of elevation.
Austria’s Carina Schrempf made the early break on the second lap and opened up a gap of three minutes. The chase gradually heated up, with Dutch and Spanish attackers trying to shake up the field. Elisa Longo Borghini’s Squadra Azzurra covered their move while Hungary’s Blanka Vas also showed her will to attack.
Eventually, it was Belgium’s Julie Van de Velde who got back to Schrempf on the cobbles of Kimihurura, with 77km to go. Shirin van Anrooij also bridged the gap to ensure Dutch presence at the front. The battle for glory was intensifying.
On the fifth lap, Van Anrooij went solo at the front, only to be caught on the seventh lap, with 57km remaining. Another move immediately ignited, with Spain’s Mireia Benito accelerating and Switzerland’s Noemi Rüegg joining her at the front.
The intensity increased again with three laps to go, and a spectacular chase group emerged. Longo Borghini accelerated from the bunch as the chasers got back to the lead duo into the last two laps, but it seemed too little, too late, for the Italian leader and the other contenders still in the group.
The ten leaders became three on the penultimate ascent of the Côte de Kigali Golf, with Spain’s Mavi García, New Zealand’s Niamh Fisher-Black and Canada’s Magdeleine Vallières Mill, a former trainee at the UCI World Cycling Centre in Aigle, Switzerland, powering to the front. Germany’s Antonia Niedermaier and the Netherlands’ Riejanne Markus joined them ahead of the final lap.
The race exploded at every echelon in the final lap, with Switzerland’s Marlen Reusser and Elise Chabbey, as well as France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, putting the hammer down. But nobody was in a position to react to Vallières Mill’s acceleration at the bottom of the final ascent of Kimihurura. She eventually took victory 23’’ ahead of Fisher-Black, with García rounding out the podium (+27’’) and Chabbey settling for fourth (+41’’).
“The girls believed in me, so I believed in myself and I really committed to going for it,” Vallières Mills said. “I prepared well, so I knew I was in good form. I just tried and told myself I didn’t want to have any regrets… I don’t! It’s great to do it here, and with the [UCI] Worlds next year in Montréal, it’s perfect.”
Full results here.
