MAKING HISTORY IN QUÉBEC
The spires of the Château Frontenac house a maze of rooms, suites, conference facilities, ballrooms and museum displays. The hotel on a promontory over the Saint Lawrence River is part hospitality business, part heritage site. By North American standards, Québec City has a storied history. From salient moments like the city’s British capture in 1759 through to the 1943 summit that conceived the idea of the allied invasion of Europe – D-Day in other words – a lot has happened here. Tourists pile daily into the dark, brassy lobby of the Frontenac to soak up the atmosphere of the place where Churchill and Roosevelt discussed the course of the Second World War and changed history. More recently, Québec City and the legendary hotel were locations in a huge TV drama in South Korea. So the visitors keep coming to the painstakingly preserved, meticulously kept city. Around, roofs gleamed with new copper – a faithful if phenomenally expensive method of restoration. But then tourism is this city’s golden goose.
Meanwhile, cycling’s golden goose, Peter Sagan, was an elusive presence around the hotel. Most of the peloton were relaxed enough to filter slowly through the lobby, but the Slovakian flitted stealthily from sponsor commitments back to his room without causing so much as a ripple.
In the GP Cycliste de Québec, the 27-year-old maintained an impeccable position hidden near the head of the peloton each time the race crawled up the key difficulty, the Côte de la Montagne. The race is now defined by the long sprint up to the finish amid the string of bars and restaurants on the Grand Allée. Sagan read it expertly to become the first back-to-back winner in the race’s eight-year run. He relegated Greg Van Avermaet to second - the Belgian’s fourth podium in six years. Michael Matthews was third. It was a podium organisers could be happy with, even if the action for the first four and three quarter hours had been less than sparkling. “Everybody knew it would be difficult to attack because of the wind,” Tim Wellens said.
“I was waiting for the last 200m. It was a hard sprint today because it was a headwind,” Sagan said afterwards.
A small piece of cycling history was made because it was Sagan’s 100th career win. Organisers had relabelled a bottle of champagne, which they presented to him on the podium. In public, the bottle kept its cork. “It’s very nice,” Sagan agreed mildly when asked what it felt like to join André Greipel, Mark Cavendish and Alejandro Valverde as the only active riders with 100. “But if we are healthy maybe it’s better to live for 100 years! I still have to keep myself hungry for more victories.”
Sagan’s never been much interested in observing history or his place in it, but he’s happy enough contributing to it. In 2010, travelling back to the hotel after Sagan’s second Paris-Nice stage win in his neo-pro year, an ASO car pulled alongside the Liquigas car to get a look at the youngster. Sagan peered back unknowingly at a dark-complexioned man with a furrowed brow. “That’s Bernard Hinault,” the DS told him.