And normal service has resumed. If Julian Alaphilippe’s victory at GP Quebec on Friday was – as the man himself wrote on social media – proof that “old cycling is not finished”, UAE Team Emirates have reminded us in no uncertain terms that they decide exactly what cycling is right now. Brandon McNulty’s victory in Montreal marks the team’s 85th win of this season, taken with apparent ease and the type of dominance that we haven’t seen from a singular squad in decades. This is new cycling. This is the WorldTour in 2025; where money buys the best riders who can destroy almost an entire peloton before deciding between them who gets the glory.

Of the 161 riders that took to the start line in Canada on Sunday, only 55 made it to the end of the hilly 209-kilometre race, and only 28 finished within ten minutes of UAE’s Brandon McNulty and Tadej Pogačar who took first and second place. This steady, gruelling, methodical whittling down of a peloton made up of the best cyclists on the planet can be, mostly, put down to the way in which UAE Team Emirates controlled the bike race. All seven riders remained in perfect formation – a neat, orderly line on the front of the bunch – lap after lap, setting a pace that was shelling their rivals out of the back like they were of a different class entirely.In the end, when the team was satisfied with the damage they had done, it was McNulty who got the call: “Tadej asked me if I wanted to try and go solo and I said I would try,” the American rider explained in his post-race press conference. The world champion was puppeteering the race scenario, playing professional cycling like a video game while his competitors gritted their teeth on his wheel. McNulty’s attack led to a breakaway of four, before Pogačar took matters into his own hands and made a move himself. No one could follow, as usual, and the four-time Tour de France winner was away, alone in his rainbows, a position he’s becoming all too familiar with.

“After the climb there’s this long straight and I could see there was one guy behind me. I asked what the situation was on the radio and got confirmation that it was Brandon so I waited on the top of the next little climb and we rode together,” Pogačar recalled after the race.

So then there were two of them, riding towards another win in a race that had gone exactly to script. Perhaps it is no surprise: UAE brought their Tour de France team to this duo of Canadian one-day events, a line-up of cycling’s all stars who are only used to the top step of the podium. They didn’t win in Quebec but they came close, and Pogačar’s failure to take victory there can really only be put down to the terrain not being difficult enough for the world champion to make a difference. In Montreal, with over 2000 metres of elevation gain over the five hour event, this was where he and his teammates could show the power they did in France in July. This is why they are about to break the all time record for the number of wins for one team in a single season. The physical strength of the team is imperative to their success – there is no doubting that – but Pogačar as a leader also knows how to foster a thriving team culture. He did so by allowing McNulty to take the win in Canada – the American rider has been a loyal domestique for Pogačar throughout this season. If there is one thing about the Slovenian rider, it’s that he is not greedy with his victories, and he gives back to those who help him when he can.

“This is a super special day for me and to win with a teammate and Tadej in the rainbow jersey is so special. As a professional this is the first time I have won with a teammate like this,” McNulty smiled in his post-race press conference. “I know that it wasn’t for free to get in this situation so it wasn’t a full gift, but he let me win which was a gift from him in the end.”

So this ‘new cycling’ is a version of the sport which the world champion, by and large, controls. He moves his teammates around like chess players and drops entire pelotons of WorldTour riders when he feels like it. There’s nothing anyone can do, apart from sit back and marvel at the spectacle. We are just two weeks away from the World Championships in Rwanda, where Pogačar will go and aim to defend his title. He won’t have his UAE Team Emirates troops around him then, but he will have confidence after his performances in Canada that he is still in the form we saw when he took his yellow jersey two months ago. It’s become hard to imagine a version of this sport without Pogačar in rainbows, and after Sunday's performance, it’s hard to imagine a reality where he isn’t in them again next year too.