“How do you and your teammates decide who will take this race? You seem to split it among yourselves.”
That’s what I asked Adam Yates before the start of the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal. I noted he won in 2023. His UAE Team Emirates teammate Tadej Pogačar took the race in 2022 and 2024, and was the favourite for this year.
“Also Tim Wellens won in 2015,” Yates reminded me. That year it rained so hard the organization had trouble broadcasting live images. “We have a few winners. We’ll see. We have a super strong team. We’ll see how it plays out on the road.”
During the race, UAE seemed to take full ownership of the event, controlling the bunch. Wellens’s duties of pulling the peloton ended at about 75 km to go. The day’s breakaway was absorbed shortly after.
Following the race, the winner, Brandon McNulty, recounted how the finale played out. “It was with three laps to go when Tadej asked if I wanted to try to go solo,” McNulty said. “I said, ‘I can try, but we’ll see.’” McNulty and fellow U.S. rider Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek) got away. Then, Louis Barré of Intermarché-Wanty launched and Pogačar followed.
The world champion and team leader didn’t come to Canada in the shape he had hoped to have. “I was a little bit afraid coming here to Canada, that my shape would not be good because I was sick the whole week before coming here,” Pogačar said. He couldn’t train at the level he had wanted to. On Friday, he finished 29th at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec. “In Quebec City, the legs were not the greatest, but I got back my motivation and a bit of confidence.”
Pogačar attacked the group of four. McNulty was able to join him.
“We rode the last lap together,” Pogačar said. “It was even more beautiful than last year when I arrived solo.”
McNulty’s feelings mirrored those of the world champion’s. “It was a super special day,” McNulty said. “Not only to win one/two with a teammate, but when it’s a guy like Tadej in the rainbow jersey, it’s special when you come across together. I’m really thankful that he was nice enough to let me cross the line first because it’s my first one-day WorldTour win.”
McNulty was asked if the win was, in fact, a gift from Pogačar. “We saw how it played out,”…
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