NorthGeek

The World’s Best at Montreal ProTour

This past weekend, the Tour de France came to Quebec.

It is extremely remarkable that Quebec City and Montreal hosted the ProTour. The ProTour is the season long series of races around the world and mostly in Europe, but very rarely in North America. The last time a similar race was held in North America was in Montreal in 1992.

These world’s best cyclists from the very select ProTour teams (there are only 18 of them) raced two road races on Friday in Quebec and Sunday in Montreal. The ProTour squads were joined a Canadian national team which is being directed by 1988 Montreal winner Bauer.

And what heroic racing and deafening crowds. Watch the final kilometres of the Montreal race here:

Rabobank’s Robert Gesink from The Netherlands apparently climbed the big hill, the Camilien Houde in Montreal, in 3 minutes and 45 seconds, the last lap and 16th of the race. This is unreal, and so hard to comprehend from my best — 4:45 or so.

NorthGeek’s own Chris Manitt shot this video on the downhill, for some appreciation of what they do — the pace and concentration:

Here are the final kilometres of the Quebec race:

The ProTour will be back for at least the next four years. Did you go see it? Was it promoted well?