The two Canadian World Tour races are back after being cancelled due to the pandemic for the past two seasons. It’s the 11th time Canada will be hosting the Grand Prix Cycliste du Montreal and Quebec.

Bahrain Victorious was on the podium in Montreal in 2018 with Sonny Colbrelli and a year later with Ivan Cortina. This year, Pello Bilbao will lead the line-up off the back of an impressive Deutschland Tour where he finished runner-up in the GC and took the final stage win. He will be taking on some of cycling’s biggest stars in Tadej Pogacar(UAE), Wout Van Aert(Jumbo), and Geraint Thomas(Ineos).

The Grand Prix Cycliste du Quebec takes place on the 9th of September. It is a city circuit of 16 laps that see riders climb 2,976 vertical metres over the 201km route. Two days later, Montreal hosts the second of the races, which provides a tougher test with 4,842 vertical metres over the 221km course, consisting of 18 laps of a 12.3km circuit.

Sports Director Neil Stephens hopes to challenge the podium with a strong line-up: “It’s a very exciting group going to the Canada races. Firstly it’s Quebec, a very punchy race with shorter but hard climbs, which always comes down to a select sprint group, and Montreal with more meters of climbing which should be a harder race. We are going to those races with a mixture of young and experienced riders – Matez Govekar, an exciting rider, he already won his first pro bike race. He’s going to learn about those races as those are the races he can potentially win in the future, but at this stage, he’s here to serve his leaders, also learn from the leaders, and now who knows, if it comes down to the select group, he might have his chance in the finish.

The team will be well supported by Jonathan Milan, who is going great, and Jan Tratnik and Hermann Pernsteiner in both of these races. Tratnik put in an impressive performance at the Bretagne classic while Pernsteiner did a fantastic job supporting Pello in Germany, so both are showing good form. Damiano Caruso showed that he’s far better than we expected. He worked well in Bretagne 10 days ago, and he’s ready to go to support the team. The first race (Quebec) really suits Matej Mohoric. He’ll try to look after himself to get to the finish, and if he’s good to go for the result, he’ll be there to go, but otherwise, he’ll look after Pello Bilbao. That is Quebec, we’ll try to do the best result, but Montreal is a different story – it really suits Pello Bilbao, 100% we are going for the podium with him. He’s very motivated. He’ll be doing Quebec to try things out, he gets a decent result there normally, but it’s a podium finish in Montreal we are aiming for.”