Brandon McNulty to lead UAE Team Emirates-XRG in the Veneto

As the WorldTour season comes to a close in China, the European road racing season will conclude across France and Italy this week.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG will line up at the Giro del Veneto on Wednesday, 14 October, followed by the Veneto Classic and Chrono des Nations on Sunday, 18 October. It will be at the latter that the 2026 season officially comes to an end.

Over in Italy, the Emirati squad will spend the week in the Veneto region, home to the acclaimed city of Venice. There, local expertise and advice will be readily on hand from Sports Directors Fabio Baldato and Marco Marcato.

In their ranks, the Venetian pair will call upon Filippo Baroncini, Benoît Cosnefroy, Brandon McNulty, António Morgado, Pavel Sivakov, Tim Wellens, and Gen Z rider Moritz Mauss. This squad of seven will take on both the Giro del Veneto and the Veneto Classic, with UAE Team Emirates-XRG looking to add to its previous victories in both races.

The 2025 Giro del Veneto saw Isaac del Toro and Pavel Sivakov come across the line in first and second place for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, marking a memorable afternoon.

Meanwhile, the Veneto Classic was won by Marc Hirschi and Davide Formolo for the Emirati outfit in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Although Del Toro will not be back to defend his crown at the Giro del Veneto, UAE Team Emirates-XRG will boast the recently crowned UCI World Road Race Champion, McNulty. The American claimed the crown in Montréal, Canada, and has started his year in the rainbow jersey in terrific form at the Italian Classics.

A constant presence at the front of recent races, McNulty will look to continue to shine in the Veneto. It is only fitting that the rainbow jersey will be on the start line on Wednesday, with the Giro del Veneto sporting an illustrious history.

Returning to the calendar after a nine-year absence, the race was revived in 2021 by the former Milano-Sanremo champion, Filippo Pozzato. Dating all the way back to 1909 – the same year that the Giro d’Italia was introduced – the Giro del Veneto counts Constante Girardengo, Fausto Coppi and Francesco Moser on its star-studded list of winners.

The 2026 Giro del Veneto will begin in Verona and head east to Vicenza, on the afternoon of Wednesday, 14 October.

After 83.5km, the peloton will hit the Vicenza circuit that is to be raced five times in full before the finish. The Cima Strada Militare is the defining feature of this loop, stretching out for almost 2km at 5.2%.

As for the finish itself, that will come a kilometre into the sixth and final ascent of the climb, offering a punchy conclusion to the race last won by UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s Del Toro.

Four days on, UAE Team Emirates-XRG will race the Veneto Classic. Introduced in 2021 to coincide with the Giro del Veneto, Sunday’s race brings cobblestones, gravel and steep climbs, as the European road racing season draws to a close.

It will be the same contingent of Baroncini, Cosnefroy, McNulty, Morgado, Sivakov, Wellens and Mauss for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, as the squad looks to win the race for a third time.

Victors in 2022 and 2023, UAE Team Emirates-XRG narrowly missed out on another title last season, with Florian Vermeersch pipped to the line in an uphill sprint by Sakarias Koller Løland (Uno-X Mobility). This time out, another tough parcours will offer ample opportunity for UAE Team Emirates-XRG to make the racing hard.

Hosted in Bassano del Grappa, the finish of the Veneto Classic will take place in the nearby Cittadella, but not before a tough parcours that includes more than 2,000m of undulating roads across 157.5km.

The climbing is relentless all afternoon, with the Colline di Marostica offering up its steep muri (walls) to the peloton. Any potential winners of this race will need to go to the well for one last time in 2026, before leaving it all on the roads of the Veneto region.

Thanks to its mix of terrain and the up-and-down parcours, the 2026 Veneto Classic promises another entertaining instalment of the region’s youngest race.

Meanwhile, running concurrently with the Veneto Classic will be the Chrono des Nations in France. A long-running event that is entering its 44th edition, the Chrono des Nations is run as an individual time trial, marking it out as one of the most unique races in the calendar.

With a list of winners that includes former world champions in the discipline, such as Tony Martin, Chris Boardman and Vasil Kiryienka, the Chrono des Nations pits the best time trialists in the world against one another.

This test against the clock is held on an out-and-back 45.4km course from Les Herbiers, in the Vendée department of France.

A route that suits the specialists, the Chrono des Nations will see Mikkel Bjerg, Luca Giaimi and Jay Vine line up for UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

Both Vine and Bjerg are two-time runners-up at the race, with the Australian Vine missing out by less than half a second to the winner two years ago, Stefan Küng. Bjerg’s results came in 2017 and 2018, respectively, when the Dane was the reigning under-23 world time trial champion – going to show his pedigree in the discipline.

This Sunday will mark Giaimi’s debut at the Chrono des Nations, but his worth against the clock was exemplified by his second place in the Italian National Time Trial Championships earlier this season.

Be it at the Veneto Classic, the Chrono des Nations or the Tour of Guangxi, the 2026 campaign will draw to a close this Sunday for UAE Team Emirates-XRG. Before that point, however, the Emirati squad will be determined to add to its tally of 77 victories for the year.