THE SPIRIT OF THE PIONEERS
CANADA PROVES THERE’S SUCCESS TO BE HAD OUTSIDE CYCLING’S HEARTLAND
Michael Matthews punches the sky. Proud to remain unbeaten in Québec, on a circuit which snakes around the roads of the old town, he is reassured of his form, satisfied that the training he has put in since the Tour de France has paid off. On the podium, Sagan and Van Avermaet stand on either side, and Matthews raises three fingers, the number of consecutive wins he’s had in Canada. Later, in the press conference, he’ll praise the spirit of these races, where it “feels like a Worlds” and pays tribute to “the incredible support”.
Behind the scenes, Serge Arsenault smiles. Arsenault is 71, a former TV journalist-turned canny businessman with the frame of an athlete and the face of a movie star. Since 2010 he has been the organiser of the Grands Prix Québec and Montréal, the sole North American WorldTour one-day races. These haven’t appeared out of nowhere. Between 1988 and 1992, he’d organised the GP des Amériques in Montréal, which was a round of the UCI’s World Cup.
The idea, at the time, was daring and preposterous to cycling’s traditionalists: to export a sport rooted and established in old Europe over the Atlantic to the New World. In fact, the GP des Amériques worked so well that the sport’s organisers on the old continent shifted their August races to September.
But Arsenault continued to work hard. In Québec, the land of the pioneers, they only give up when they are dead. In 1999 he created the TransCanada, a stage race between Québec and Niagara Falls. And he left no stone unturned in 2010. He succeeded in convincing the UCI to give him two licences for the struggling ProTour, and it was third time lucky. His assets: two beautiful and challenging circuits, ideal for Worlds preparation; excellent TV coverage; excellent hotels; an enthusiastic public. And the secret spice of the typically warm welcome of the Québecois, mixed with North American organisational rigour. In the first editions, in 2010, the challenge was issued, and on the professional peloton’s grapevine word spread that the Canadian races were not to be missed.
Organising races outside Europe is a big challenge, with financial and logistical conundrums: crossing the Atlantic on three chartered aeroplanes to transport 340 people, almost 300 bikes and 12 tonnes of gear, and then to offer this small army the working conditions to thrive. Ten editions of the races later, Matthews and also Sagan, Van Avermaet, Gilbert, Costa, Gesink, Gerrans, Urán, Voeckler and more have added their names to the roll of honour, in two races which are now a firm fixture on the calendar. What’s the secret? “I like cyclists,” says Arsenault. But behind the perfect vision of the GPs Québec and Montréal, there is a permanent struggle to prove that pro cycling is a viable export and that the Canadian races, like a few other events outside Europe, are not just exotic parentheses to the season, or a mirage. The question is often posed on the old continent about the will to develop the sport outside of Waregem, San Remo or Fourmies, but there is legitimacy in pulling cycling outside of its comfort zone. Arsenault is doing this and he has the iconoclastic vision of a grand world circuit pulling in blue chip sponsors, and where the races are not in competition with the Vuelta a España or the Tour of Britain, where the TV production values are harmonised and the revenues shared between the riders, the teams and the organisers. In short, his vision is a sport built in the image of the major pro sports, ignoring the cry of the traditionalists that “cycling is not a sport like others”. This attitude is grit in the gears of those who are unwilling to take risks.
This is what Serge Arsenault is up against. But the traditionalists should note: he’s animated by the same pioneer spirit which has always pushed the Québecois to conquer new territories.