Place Name: Avenue Du Parc
Address: Avenue Du Parc, Montréal, Quebec H3A 2B5, Canada
Details: September 14, 2025
After the race in Québec, the riders spent their rest day travelling West, following the St. Lawrence River upstream, to Montréal for the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal. While today's race is shorter at 209KM, it is much more difficult and will certainly be more selective. As with Québec, the GP Montréal takes place on a 12.5KM circuit in the heart of the city. From the start, the climbing begins almost right away with the Voie Camillien Houde, longest uphill of the race at 1.8KM with an average gradient of 8%. The descent takes the riders out of the Mont Royal park and into the University of Montreal for the 800M Côte de Polytechnique. There is very little reprieve before the third and final climb up Pagnuelo which is 500M at 7.5%. The course continues through neighborhoods before descending down to Park Avenue with a 180 degree turn at the bottom at 350M from the finish. They do it all over again and again for 17 laps totaling 4,000M of elevation gain.
The weather was warmer and the start was hotter than what we saw in Québec on Friday. The bunch was strung out on the Voie Camillien Houde and by the top, a group of seven got away including Pascal Eenkhoorn of Soudal Quickstep, Jørgen Nordhagen of Visma-Lease a Bike, Andrew August and Artem Shmidt of Ineos, Victor Lafay of Decathlon AG2R, Frank van den Broek of Picnic-PostNL, and Embret Svestad-Bårdseng of Arkéa-B&B Hotels. UAE-XRG started riding very early with Nils Politt and kept the break within 90 seconds. Politt got a little company with Alex Kirsch of Lidl-Trek and Jacob Eriksson of Tudor Pro Cycling at the front to keep the leaders locked in at 90 seconds.
The race continued in a holding pattern until 137.5KM to go when Groupama-FDJ attacked up the Pagnuelo with Lewis Askey who was followed by Laurence Pithie of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe. Fredrik Dversnes of Uno-X Mobility came across and when they got to the finish line to start the next lap, they were 20 seconds ahead of the peloton and 1 minute 20 seconds down on the original break. A reaction came from behind by Harry Sweeny and Alex Baudin of EF-Education EasyPost, Jan Tratnik of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, Mauro Schmid of Jayco AlUla, Juan Pedro López of Lidl-Trek, Gianni Vermeersch of Alpecin-Deceuninck, and Marius Mayrhofer of Tudor Pro Cycling.
Through 10 laps to go, the race was closing in. The Askey chase group was at 40 seconds but the peloton, still being led by Politt, was just 30 seconds behind. The front two groups came together on the Côte de Polytechnique with 117KM to go to form a new lead group of 16 riders. They had 1 minute 20 seconds as they started the Voie Camillien Houde with 110KM to go but they lost Eenkhoorn when the Dutchman hit a pothole on the climb and went over the bars. He was able to get back up but wasn't able to rejoin the front of the race.
Politt continued to ride on the front until 8 laps to go after nearly half the race on the front. Tim Wellens took over and brought the gap from 58 seconds to just 20 seconds by the top of the Voie Camillien Houde with 96KM to go. UAE-XRG continued their hard pace through the constantly twisting circuit which made life at the back of the peloton extremely difficult. Wellens did a full two laps on the front and kept the remaining riders in the break at 25 seconds, all the while dropping riders from the peloton.
Pavel Sivakov was next man up and his increased pace on the Voie Camillien Houde dropped big names such as Friday's winner Julian Alaphilippe, Wout van Aert, and Michael Matthews. By the top with 71.5KM to go, Baudin was the last rider in the break but he was less than 5 seconds ahead of the bunch which had no more than 40 riders remaining. By the time Sivakov pulled off with 3 laps to go at the base of the Voie Camillien Houde, Brandon McNulty of UAE-XRG attacked and the only one to immediately react was American champion Quinn Simmons of Lidl-Trek. Louis Barré of Intermarché-Wanty was next to jump from the bunch and soon after, with a third of the climb to go, Tadej Pogačar of UAE-XRG made his move. He caught Barré and the pair bridged up to McNulty and Simmons to make four in the lead with 34KM to go.
McNulty did 100% of the pace making back around to the Voie Camillien Houde. Barré was dropped halfway up and a moment later, Pogačar attacked. Simmons took a breath and accelerated but he did not have enough to cover Pogačar and the Slovenian slowly drifted up the road with McNulty locked in on Simmons' wheel. Simmons and Pogačar were engaged in an individual pursuit and Simmons was doing a good job keeping a lid on the gap but when they arrived at the Côte de Polytechnique, McNulty attacked and was quickly halfway across the gap to Pogačar. The connection was made at the top of the Pagnuelo with 15.5KM to go and the UAE-XRG duo worked to build their advantage. Simmons was not going to pull them back but he had to keep riding hard to hold his third place on the road. McNulty and Pogačar came up the finishing straight side by side and it was McNulty who crossed the line first. The win for UAE-XRG gave them the outright lead for most wins ever by a team in a season with 86, surpassing Columbia - HTC. Simmons came across in third, 1 minute later, 40 seconds ahead of Neilson Powless of EF-Education EasyPost who made it three Americans in the top four.
Tags: Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, 2025, September, Montréal, Pascal Eenkhoorn, Jørgen Nordhagen, Andrew August, Artem Shmidt, Victor Lafay, Frank van den Broek, Embret Svestad-Bårdseng, Nils Politt, Alex Kirsch, Jacob Eriksson, Lewis Askey, Laurence Pithie, Fredrik Dversnes, Harry Sweeny, Alex Baudin, Jan Tratnik, Mauro Schmid, Juan Pedro López, Gianni Vermeersch, Marius Mayrhofer, Tim Wellens, Pavel Sivakov, Brandon McNulty, Quinn Simmons, Louis Barré, Tadej Pogačar