Abitibi

Abitibi was an insane race, but not as insane as it's legacy portrays. I was told in the build up to the race to expect to break a bike and whatever wheels I had and to hit the deck at least 3 times but miraculously I only saw like 4 crashes over the 500ish kilometres on the bike. Two of these crashes were in the circuit race where over the 9x11km lap we crossed over the same 2 lane bridge twice. Since we were shredding riders on a daily basis they had to put pillions up in the middle of the bridge so riders travelling in the opposite direction would not crash into us head on. This proved problematic as we were blasting at 65km/h with the wind at our backs on the latter approach into a 90% turn that saw the road go from 3 lanes to 1. I saw multiple kids run into pillions (the tall and thick ones too!), my buddy Marc Evers broke his fork doing it too. Another thing about the whole bridge thing too was that the police were standing all over it yelling "SLOW DOWN" a few of my Queb friends were even saying "pffft, dude this is bike racing" I also saw one American rider inadvertently body check a cop into a pillion where they just missed falling into the middle of the pack.

Okay well that's enough about hitting the deck, my race was.... consistent. That's not to say I am unhappy, I am just more accustomed to being more influential in my races. I will need to get used to that however if I want to go to Europe this fall for Worlds. In summary here is how it played out, I made 2 of the week's 4 big breaks the 2 middle ones that both lasted for about 25km but eventually got pulled back . When I wasn't reading riders or following moves I was helping out our leader Emile Jean with leadouts but mostly chasing down dangerous guys to his GC placing. In the deciding factor of the race, the TT, I managed 16/143 so as a first year I can only be happy with that. That left me in 18th overall which I held until the finish.


I was most happy with the fact that I always did my job for the team. A team I hope to be a part of for the Euro Project this September which will include the World Championships. It should be announced any day now, wish me luck!