Team time trials

Kicking off the Doha 2016 action are the team time trials, though with no UCI WorldTour points on offer anymore, the men’s event has taken on much less significance.

British champion Alex Dowsett rides for Movistar, who will look to improve on last year’s bronze medal and dethrone two-time back-to-back champions BMC Racing.

Team Sky have not confirmed their line-up in advance, but the British WorldTour team are also likely to have Brits in their six-man line-up, including Geraint Thomas.

Elite individual time trials – women

With no climbs in Qatar, the elite time trials are on pan-flat courses but organisers have ensured both the men’s and women’s courses are extremely technical.

The men’s under-23 race uses the same course as the women’s race the day before, before the women take on the 29.9km circuit on the Tuesday.

Taking place on the artificial Pearl-Qatar island, the course circumnavigates Porto Arabia and Viva Bahriya, and features a handful of sharp bends and u-turns.

Brits in action

National champion Hayley Simmonds rides her second UCI Road World Championships having gone from strength to strength since finishing 26th on her debut last year.

Simmonds, 28, has twice smashed the women’s ten-mile time trial record on the V718 course in East Yorkshire since winning her second national title in June.

She also smashed the 25- and 50-mile marks in a stunning year on the domestic scene, while her most recent international race saw Simmonds finish sixth at the Chrono Champenois- Trophée Européen.

National road race champion Hannah Barnes will take the second British spot, meanwhile, riding three days after bidding to defend Canyon-SRAM’s team time trial title.

Olga Zabelinskaya (Russia), who won silver in Rio and bronze at the Europeans in Plumelec is another contender.

German duo Lisa Brennauer and Trixi Worrack were absent in Plumelec, but Brennauer was world time trial champion two years ago and remains a strong contender – she was fifth at the Chrono Champenois-Trophée Européen.

Australia’s Katrin Garfoot won that event, beating Zabelinskaya into second by just 13 seconds, adding to her victories in the Australian and Oceanic championships earlier in the year.

Elite individual time trials – men

The men’s course, rather than being simply the women’s course but over the more laps, is on a different route.

While it still finishes on the Pearl-Qatar, the starting ramp will be at the Lusail Sports Complex – which itself has been used as a time trial track for the Tour of Qatar.

The 40km route packs in sharp turns at either end, with the course including no less than 11 90-degree bends and three U-turns.

In between is a long straight section down the Al Khor Coastal Road, which before crossing onto the Pearl, and circumnavigating Porto Arabia en route to the finish line.

Brits in action

British Cycling only confirmed who would be rolling off the start ramp in British colours in Qatar on Friday (October 7), with Alex Dowsett and Steve Cummings selected ahead of Geraint Thomas.

Dowsett won the time trial stage at the Tour of Poland, but missed the opportunity to ride the Giro d’Italia earlier in the year after requiring surgery on the collarbone he fractured in 2015.

His best result at the Worlds, however, remains the eighth place he earned in Valkenburg in 2012.

Cummings also rode last year’s world time trial event, finishing 14^th, and is a man in form after winning the Tour of Britain at the start of September.

However, the 35-year-old crashed out of the Giro della Toscana and also cut short his Giro dell’Emilia as he felt the effects of that crash, so it remains to be seen how he has recovered.

Last year’s winner, Vasil Kiryienka (Belarus) did not win a single time trial in the rainbow skinsuit, sacrificing his chances at the Tour de France as he opted instead to take it easy and recover ahead of more work for the team and Chris Froome.

Nevertheless, you can’t count the Belarussian 35-year-old out after he won national, European and world titles in 2015.

This year’s European champion is Spain’s Jonathan Castroviejo, who was narrowly denied a medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics when he finished fourth.

Castroviejo also finished second behind Froome on stage 19 of the Vuelta a Espana and certainly has the form.

Also among the favourites is in-form Rohan Dennis (Australia), who claimed the national title in January and has since gone on to win time trials at the Tour of California and Eneco Tour, and finish second on stage 7a of the Tour of Britain.

Dennis was setting the benchmark times in Rio, but a mechanical ultimately disrupted his momentum as he went on to finish fifth. Doha offers a chance, therefore, of some redemption.