For the first time in its history, Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux will race on the American continent, on the occasion of the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec (9/09) and the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal (11/09), two Canadian World Tour classics. After two years of absence because of the pandemic, the events return with their traditional urban and hilly circuit of 12 kilometer.
Two days later, the University of Montréal will be the decor for the race of 221.4 kilometer, in which almost 4700 meters of climbing have to be covered. The circuit will be repeated eighteen times and contains the Côte de Camilien-Houde (1.8 km at 8%), the Côte de Polytechnique (780 m at 6%) and the Boulevard du Mont-Royal (800 m at 4%). Just like in Québec, the 500 last meters are uphill.
A selection of seven riders will represent the Belgian World Team for these two classics under the direction of Aike Visbeek. Théo Delacroix, Biniam Girmay, Andrea Pasqualon and Georg Zimmermann will make their debut on Canadian soil. Sven Erik Bystrøm, Baptiste Planckaert and Loïc Vliegen participates at least one time.
« This Tuesday we travelled from Paris with the team to fly to Canada. It will be my first time on American soil, it's going to be exciting. We'll be there three days in advance to prepare. We'll do the course recon and I'll probably watch images of the previous editions. The difficulty of the races will be similar to my two last races, the Bretagne Classic - Ouest France and the Tour du Doubs, in which we had to cover more than 3000 climbing meters. I felt very good and managed to follow the strongest riders. In the Tour du Doubs the final was even harder than before with the addition of a climb before Le Larmont in the last 20 kilometers. I hope I can pursue my good series of results in Canada and in the GP de Wallonie, my last races before the World Championships in Australia. »
