The event was scheduled to take place on a hilly course in Switzerland, but the COVID-19 epidemic affected the race, forcing the UCI to find an alternative.

However, the decision to hold the World Championships in Eagle Martigny on September 20-27 as planned will allow British road coach Matt Brammeier to focus on the type of riders he needs for his six-man team.

"We have the Yates brothers, Geraint Thomas, Chris Froome. We also have James Knox, Tao Geoghegan Hart, and Hugh Kersee. They're all pretty strong climbers," Brammeier told Cycling News.

"Luke Rowe is also a contender, and Alex Dowsett is also focusing on the TT. The priority for me is to build a motivated group."

"Honestly, nothing surprises me about Switzerland. I have had no formal contact from anyone other than what I saw in the media, and I have just been planning for Switzerland all along. We had not looked at the Middle East at all."

Selection for this year's World Championships is complicated by the fact that athletes have not raced since mid-March. The World Tour is scheduled to resume in early August, but with the World Championships overlapping with the final stage of the Tour de France, Blanmeier is trying to make the final team selections as late as possible.

"I got a call yesterday and we are trying to clarify what the final selection will be. The nuts and bolts won't change much from before, we just need to take into account last year's results and expand that element of the paperwork," he said.

"That's really the only thing that has changed. It's going to be a little more difficult as far as selection, and we're going to have to do a little better job of communicating what's going on and, honestly, catching up with where the players are focused."

One of the benefits of the new race calendar is that the spacing between the Tour de France and the World Championships could be the same when the Tour de France and the Olympics overlap again in 2021. Thus, teams like Great Britain could use this year's World Championships as a sort of test event for selection and preparation.

"We don't have an official long list, but we have a good group of guys. It will be a beneficial race for us and all the young people who were thinking about Tokyo have put their hands up and said they are willing to do the World Championships," Blanmeier said.

"Some of them will be from the Tour, and the period between the Tour and the Olympics will be similar next year, so we can learn a lot from that.