Marlen Reusser’s successful defence of the elite women’s World Championships time trial title in Montréal has moved her firmly into the upper reaches of the event’s all-time standings. The Swiss rider now has two rainbow jerseys and five medals, a record made more striking by what happened in the two World Championships immediately before her winning run.
In 2023, Reusser arrived as one of the favourites but stopped midway through the time trial, climbed off her bike and sat on the grass beside the road. She later explained that mental exhaustion rather than a mechanical problem or physical injury had caused her to abandon.
A year later she did not reach the start at all. Her 2024 season was badly affected by post-COVID syndrome, commonly described as long COVID, forcing her to miss both the Paris Olympics and a home World Championships in Zürich.
Reusser returned in 2025 and finally won the individual rainbow jersey in Kigali. Twelve months later, on her 35th birthday, she defended it in Montréal.
She is now joint third for World Championships time trial victories, behind only Jeannie Longo and Ellen van Dijk. If the historical table is ordered in the conventional way by gold medals, then silvers and bronzes, Reusser ranks fourth all-time.
Her latest victory, ahead of Zoe Bäckstedt and Franziska Koch, is covered in ProCyclingUK’s 2026 women’s World Championships time trial report.
Where Marlen Reusser ranks in World Championships time trial history
The elite women’s individual time trial has been part of the Road World Championships since 1994.
Longo remains the outright record-holder with four victories, including three consecutively between 1995 and 1997. Van Dijk follows with three, while Reusser is now part of the group on two.
Her two silver medals put her ahead of most of the other double champions when ties are broken by the remaining medal colours.
| Rider | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Winning years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jeannie Longo | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1995, 1996, 1997, 2001 |
| Ellen van Dijk | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2013, 2021, 2022 |
| Judith Arndt | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2011, 2012 |
| Marlen Reusser | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2025, 2026 |
| Kristin Armstrong | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2006, 2009 |
| Karin Thürig | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2004, 2005 |
| Annemiek van Vleuten | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2017, 2018 |
| Chloé Dygert | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2019, 2023 |
| Amber Neben | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2008, 2016 |
| Leontien van Moorsel | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1998, 1999 |
The complete roll of honour can be found in ProCyclingUK’s Road World Championships winners and records guide.
The table makes the scale of Reusser’s progression clear. Before September 2025 she had never won the individual World Championship. A year later she has two titles and sits immediately behind three of the most decorated time triallists in the race’s history.
Photo Credit: GettyThe 2023 World Championships ended beside the road
That position would have looked difficult to imagine during the World Championships in Stirling three years ago.
Reusser began the 2023 time trial as one of the strongest favourites. She had won the Tour de France Femmes time trial shortly beforehand and had been the leading contender in ProCyclingUK’s 2023 World Championships time trial preview.
She had also already helped Switzerland win the mixed relay earlier in the championships, although that victory included a crash for Reusser after she clipped a pedal through a corner.
The individual time trial unfolded very differently.
Reusser reached the first intermediate checkpoint 33 seconds behind eventual champion Chloé Dygert. Before reaching the second split she slowed, shook her head and stopped.
There was no bike change and no attempt to restart. Reusser turned around, moved to the side of the course and sat down on the grass.
It became one of the most unusual images of that World Championships.
Reusser later made clear that the earlier crash was not why she had stopped. Nor had there been a mechanical problem. She described a period of mental exhaustion after a succession of major races and said she had reached the World Championships already knowing that things did not feel right.
Her 2023 season had contained major successes, including overall victory at the Tour de Suisse and a Tour de France Femmes stage win, but there had been little space between them. By August, the demands of continually moving on to the next objective had caught up with her.
Rather than force herself through another 20 kilometres when she knew the performance was gone, she stopped.
A month later Reusser returned to the discipline at the European Championships and won for a third consecutive year. The World Championships rainbow jersey, however, remained missing.
Long COVID then wiped out her 2024 World Championships
The following season brought a completely different problem.
Reusser contracted COVID early in 2024 before suffering a serious crash at the Tour of Flanders. The injuries included fractures around her jaw and ear canal as well as damage to her teeth, requiring surgery.
Further viral illnesses followed during the spring.
She attempted to return to normal training but found that harder efforts repeatedly caused her health to deteriorate. Her racing programme gradually disappeared.
Reusser withdrew from the Paris Olympics, where she would have been one of Switzerland’s main medal hopes after taking silver in the Tokyo time trial.
By August she was dealing with post-COVID syndrome and knew that the World Championships were also unrealistic.
That particular absence hurt because Zürich was hosting them.
ProCyclingUK covered the decision when Reusser confirmed she would miss her home World Championships. She had originally hoped that sufficient rest might allow her to recover in time, but ultimately needed considerably longer.
The 2024 women’s World Championships time trial preview consequently contained a strange gap. One of the best time triallists of her generation was absent from a World Championship being held on Swiss roads.
Grace Brown won the title before retiring at the end of the season.
For Reusser, the priority by then was simply getting healthy enough to race properly again.
Photo Credit: GettyFrom long COVID to a first rainbow jersey in 2025
Her move from SD Worx-Protime to Movistar came while there was still uncertainty over how completely she would recover.
The answer arrived quickly during 2025.
Reusser returned to winning early in the year and eventually produced one of the best seasons of her career. She became a genuine general classification leader as well as regaining the time trial form that had made her a perennial World Championships contender.
By the time she reached Kigali she had still never won the individual rainbow jersey.
That was despite an unusually strong medal record.
She had been second behind Anna van der Breggen at Imola in 2020, second behind Van Dijk in Flanders in 2021 and third in Wollongong in 2022.
Then came the 2023 DNF and the complete absence of 2024.
Kigali finally ended the sequence.
Reusser dominated the difficult 31.2km course to win by 51.89 seconds over Van der Breggen, with Demi Vollering taking bronze. ProCyclingUK’s report from Reusser’s first World Championships time trial victory captured a result that had taken considerably longer to arrive than her performances against the clock suggested it should have.
Her World Championships record had suddenly changed from three medals without a win to four medals including a rainbow jersey.
Montréal has changed it again.
Montréal makes the comeback more significant
Reusser’s second title came on a course bearing little resemblance to Kigali.
Rwanda had offered climbing, changing gradients and a route where managing the harder sections mattered almost as much as outright speed.
Montréal was 39.2km with only 220 metres of climbing, including long stretches where riders could settle into the time trial position and sustain power.
It was exactly the sort of course where Bäckstedt and the other specialists might have exposed Reusser if there had been any weakness.
For the first half of the race, Bäckstedt did just that.
The British rider was ten seconds quicker at the opening checkpoint and remained ahead through the second split. Reusser did not panic or respond with an immediate surge.
She gradually increased the pace.
By the third checkpoint she had turned the deficit into a 14-second advantage. At the finish it was 40.11 seconds.
The result was emphatic, but the way Reusser reached it was different from Kigali. Rather than controlling the championship from the opening kilometres, she paced the effort around a fast start from Bäckstedt and was strongest when the course and distance began to tell.
She became world champion again on her 35th birthday.
Reusser now has five World Championships time trial medals
Her individual World Championships medal record now reads:
| Year | Host | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Imola | Silver |
| 2021 | Flanders | Silver |
| 2022 | Wollongong | Bronze |
| 2023 | Stirling | DNF |
| 2024 | Zürich | DNS |
| 2025 | Kigali | Gold |
| 2026 | Montréal | Gold |
That sequence tells more of the story than the two victories alone.
Between 2020 and 2022, Reusser looked close to becoming world champion without quite reaching the top step. Then came two championships where she could not even finish or start.
She responded by winning the next two.
It also means that every World Championships time trial Reusser has finished since 2020 has ended with her on the podium.
The progression is silver, silver, bronze, DNF, DNS, gold, gold.
Reusser has matched Karin Thürig’s Swiss title record
The Montréal victory also brings Reusser level with another major figure in Swiss time trialling.
Karin Thürig won consecutive World Championships in 2004 and 2005. Until Reusser’s victory this weekend, Thürig remained the only Swiss woman with two individual TT rainbow jerseys.
Reusser has now matched both her total and her run of consecutive victories.
Her overall World Championships medal record is stronger, however.
Thürig finished with two golds, one silver and one bronze. Reusser now has two golds, two silvers and a bronze.
That gives Reusser five medals to Thürig’s four and makes her Switzerland’s most successful women’s World Championships time triallist by total podium finishes.
A third title would put Reusser alongside Ellen van Dijk
The next step in the historical table is substantial but no longer remote.
A third victory would put Reusser level with Van Dijk, who won in 2013, 2021 and 2022.
It would also give Reusser three successive championships, matching Longo’s run from 1995 to 1997. Nobody else has won three consecutive editions of the elite women’s event.
Longo’s four career victories remain the outright benchmark.
Reusser would need two more titles to match that record, and at 35 there is no certainty about how many more attempts she will make. Her route to the current total is already unusual enough without projecting what comes next.
Three years ago she was sitting beside the road in Stirling after deciding she could not continue.
Two years ago long COVID kept her away from her home World Championships entirely.
She has now returned from both episodes to win the rainbow jersey twice in succession.
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Photo Credit: Cor Vos
That places Marlen Reusser joint third for victories in the history of the women’s World Championships time trial and fourth on a medal-table ordering of the event’s most successful riders. More importantly, the two titles have arrived only after the period when winning one appeared furthest away.
