SPIRIT OF CREATIVITY
From the top of Mont Royal, a green, heavily wooded 220m high volcanic pimple in the heart of Montréal, the rest of the rigidly grid-built city hems in the hill from all directions. On a chilly, sunny, early autumn Sunday morning the city’s outward-bound citizens hike and bike to the lattice iron cross at the highest point. In the afternoon when there’s some heat in the day, the grassy lower slopes are taken over by a more bohemian crowd.
Students from nearby McGill University loll about enjoying picnics. On the steps of the George-Étienne Cartier Monument, the tamtams - a kind of weekly get-together for the free-spirited - start up. Stalls sell patterned clothes and hippie knick-knacks. The aroma of marijuana is strong and it drifts over to the race crowd, which mills about at the GP Cycliste de Montréal finish line just a few metres away. At the centre of the tamtams is a spontaneous drumming circle that grows in size and volume as the afternoon wears on.
This Montréal course has pedigree. It’s a close replica of the parcours used in the spirited 1974 world championships road race, which Eddy Merckx won. Two years later it was the Olympic road race course. Arsenault revived it for the GP des Amériques between 1988 and 1992. At the heart of all the variations is the Côte de Camillien Houde, which is 1.8km long at eight per cent in gradient and begins rising within 500m of the start. Then halfway round the 12.1km course is the less steep Côte de la Polytechnique. The course is a mixture of hard sections but with places to recover - the perfect design for a varied race.
The peloton covers 17 laps. Compared to Québec the route in Montréal is more amenable to creative moves. 2014 winner Simon Gerrans, explained: “We’ve seen a few different scenarios unfold here. The racing dictates the outcome, not so much the course.”
Lotto-Soudal’s Tim Wellens, the winner in 2015, favoured the parcours here over the one in Québec for its creative inspiration too. “Québec is more for the puncheurs, Montréal for the climbers – but the puncheurs can survive if they’re on a good day,” Wellens said. “I don’t think the Montréal winner has succeeded by going more than one lap before the finish, so I think it’s important to wait for the final lap.”
Today, the volume from the nearby tamtams rose in concert with the intensity of the action out on the road, as it gradually built towards the final, crucial split. Against Wellens’s expectations however, the split formed on the penultimate lap on the Polytechnique. By the bell, the six-man break, which included the winner, UAE Emirates rider Diego Ulissi, had a 23-second advantage on an indecisive peloton. It was the Italian’s first one-day WorldTour victory.
The tamtams crowds and the race spectators didn’t mix much. But the drums, the city at play, and the enthusiastic fans created an ambience that invoked an even greater prize just around the corner: the worlds in Bergen. And Montréal had the pleasure of sending the biggest collection of contenders on their way.