The Canadian connection to the world championships in Richmond

When organizers of the road cycling world championships in Richmond, Va., began planning for their event, they had to look north for a model. The last time worlds was in the U.S. was in 1986 in Colorado. But the last time the event was in North America, it was in Hamilton. Pierre Hutsebaut, who is now the uci’s North American advisor based in Montreal, was Hamilton’s director of sport. He was in charge of everything related to the competition and logistics. He had a big job as Hamilton presented a unique challenge. “Hamilton was the first time the uci set a course in town,” Hutsebaut said. That’s not to say the Ontario city was the first place to have the world championships on its streets. World championship courses tend to use their host cities for the start/finish and then head out of town. Hamilton’s course was very urban and required heavy co-ordination for road closures throughout the week of competition. Hutsebaut’s logistical strategies became the model for the Olympics in Athens the following year, then the worlds in Salzburg in 2006 and, most recently, Richmond. While Hutsebaut’s influence on Richmond may have come out of work he did roughly 10 years ago, he had a small connection to the layout of the 2015 route in Virginia. In 2014, he flew down to Richmond for roughly two days to report on and approve a change in the championship route. “It didn’t change the profile of the course, but it improved the course with a better flow of traffic,” he said.