When Mondiaux Montréal 2026 president Sébastien Arsenault ran into Bernard Hinault earlier this year, he couldn’t help but seek his counsel on how to put together the Road World Championships course.
As ever, Le Blaireau’s answer was frank and to the point: “You already have your course!”
The full details have yet to be ironed out with the local authorities and signed off by the UCI, but it seems increasingly likely that the route of the 2026 Worlds in Montréal will bear more than a passing resemblance to that of the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal.
Then again, how could it be any other way? The circuit through the Parc du Mont-Royal has a cycling heritage like few others outside the sport’s traditional heartland.
There was a firm reminder of that during this weekend’s early presentation of the 2026 World Championships in Montréal, when Eddy Merckx spoke via video message, recalling his triumph in the Parc du Mont-Royal in 1974, which was the first time the World Championships took place outside of Europe.
At the time, despite the tradition and enthusiasm in outposts such as Colombia, the top level of the sport was effectively a closed shop, the preserve of a few countries in Western Europe. Those 1974 Worlds marked the formal beginning of cycling’s attempts at mondialisation.
That Canadian expedition was a novelty, but the extreme difficulties of the course meant there was nothing unfamiliar about the world champion it produced. On a day with more than 5,000 metres of total climbing, Merckx notched up his third rainbow jersey after outlasting Raymond Poulidor in the sprint, while Geneviève Gambillon of France claimed the women’s event.
The striking circuit through the Parc du Mont-Royal, with repeated ascents of the Côte Camilien-Houde, was immediately established as something of a classic. It featured again two years later when Montréal hosted the 1976 Olympic Games, and a version of it was used between 1988 and 1992, when the Grand Prix des Amériques attracted top European professionals back across the Atlantic.
When Serge Arsenault rebooted that event in 2010 with the Grand Prix Cyclistes de Québec et de Montréal, the Parc du Mont-Royal were always going to be the beating heart of the second leg of the double-header. And, although full details of the route won’t be confirmed until the UCI inspectors have given their formal imprimatur, it will clearly feature heavily in 2026 too. The only question is how much.
“When a person like Bernard Hinault…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…