Justine Ghekiere will miss the 2026 UCI Road World Championships in Montréal after further examinations revealed a small, non-displaced fracture of her patella following a crash at the Faun Tour Femmes.
AG Insurance-Soudal confirmed on Saturday that the injury has ended the 30-year-old Belgian’s season. Ghekiere crashed during Thursday’s opening stage from Guilherand-Granges to Boffres and managed to finish the stage, but did not start Stage 2 on Friday after suffering discomfort from the fall.
She returned to Belgium for further medical checks, which have now identified the fracture.
“Her focus will now fully shift towards her recovery,” AG Insurance-Soudal said.
The timing rules Ghekiere out of the elite women’s road race at the World Championships on 26 September, where she had already been selected as part of the Belgian team built around Lotte Kopecky.
Photo Credit: GettyGhekiere had been selected for Belgium’s Montréal team
Ghekiere was one of six riders named for Belgium’s elite women’s road race squad alongside Kopecky, Shari Bossuyt, Lotte Claes, Julie Van De Velde and Margot Vanpachtenbeke.
Her absence takes one of the team’s strongest climbers out of a race where climbing support could be important. The Montréal course contains around 2,500 metres of elevation across 180km, including repeated laps around Mount Royal, making it considerably more selective than a conventional championship circuit for the pure sprinters.
Kopecky remains Belgium’s obvious leader as she attempts to reclaim the rainbow jersey after winning the world title in 2023 and 2024, but Ghekiere offered a different option once the race became harder. Her ability to survive sustained climbing would have allowed Belgium to retain numbers deeper into the race and given Kopecky support beyond the flatter opening kilometres.
Belgium will now need to adjust a squad which had already been announced. Sandrine Tas and Marthe Truyen were named as reserves when the original selection was confirmed.
Crash at the Faun Tour brought her season to an abrupt end
Ghekiere had travelled to France as part of a strong AG Insurance-Soudal team for the four-day Faun Tour Femmes, the race previously known as the Tour Féminin International de l’Ardèche.
She crashed on the opening 115.8km stage to Boffres but was able to remount and finish, crossing the line more than six minutes behind the winner.
The consequences became clearer afterwards. AG Insurance-Soudal withdrew her before Friday’s second stage and sent her home for further investigation rather than continuing through the remaining three days.
Those examinations found the small fracture of the kneecap, ending any prospect of returning for Montréal or racing again later this autumn.
The team has not given a timetable for her return to training or competition, only confirming that recovery is now the priority.
Another World Championships lost to a late-season crash
The injury is particularly frustrating because this is the second consecutive year in which Ghekiere has lost a World Championships appearance following a crash shortly before the event.
She had also been due to race the 2025 championships in Rwanda before withdrawing after a fall in Germany.
Her last World Championships road race therefore remains Zürich in 2024, where she finished seventh and played an important role in Belgium’s successful title defence with Kopecky.
Montréal looked well suited to returning Ghekiere to that sort of support role. The repeated climbing offered terrain where she could contribute far beyond the opening part of the race, particularly if Belgium wanted to make the contest more selective around Kopecky.
Instead, her 2026 season ends two weeks earlier than planned.
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Photo Credit: Unipublic/Naike Ereñozaga
Ghekiere remained one of AG Insurance-Soudal’s key mountain riders
The injury closes another season in which Ghekiere remained an important climbing presence for AG Insurance-Soudal.
Her role was clear going into the Tour de France Femmes, where the team selected her alongside Urška Žigart as the main mountain support for Kim Le Court-Pienaar. Our AG Insurance-Soudal Tour de France Femmes squad preview highlighted Ghekiere’s proven record in the Tour, where she has previously won both a stage and the mountains classification.
Those results remain central to her standing within the team. Ghekiere won the polka dot jersey and Stage 7 of the 2024 Tour de France Femmes at Le Grand-Bornand, establishing herself as one of Belgium’s strongest pure climbers.
She added another major domestic result in 2025, winning the Belgian road race title in Binche with a late solo move.
AG Insurance-Soudal continued to use her in that mountain role this season, including at the Tour de France Femmes, where she was again part of the team’s support structure on the hardest stages. She was also among the riders considered in our 2026 Tour de France Femmes climbers guide before the race.
The Faun Tour was supposed to be part of her final build towards Montréal.
Instead, one crash on its opening stage has ended both that World Championships plan and the rest of her 2026 campaign.
