Montreal - day 3 - Grand Prix Cycling

Serendipitously, we found out the Grand Prix Cyclistes de Montréal was taking place at a nearby park during our stay in Montréal. This, and its twin race in Québec, are the only 2 UCI sanctioned races in North America this year.

On our short walk to the race, we passed a number of dedicated bike lanes that made me quite envious:


This statue, called The Illuminated Crowd, was also pretty cool (not sure what Jill is looking for down there):


We arrived at the park around 9:AM and caught a number of teams and riders warming up, including Levi Leipheimer and George Hincapie:





We also saw a number of the teams being presented:




The race itself was pretty exciting. We stationed ourselves near the hairpin turn near the finish line. The turn is at the bottom of a hill, so it was particularly challenging:






Each lap took about 15 minutes to complete, so we had time to wander about between laps. The entire race took about 5 and a half hours. Here, the photographers are lining up for the sprint finish:


Notice the brooms on this van - it's to sweep up the last rider:


And here are the winners (Portugal’s Rui Faria Da Costa was winner, France’s Pierrick Fedrigo was second, followed by Belgium’s Philippe Gilbert). Gilbert won the race in Quebéc a few days earlier, which clinched him as the number one ranked cyclist in the world:


And some videos I made of the start, finish, and medals presentation of the race: