On September 10 and 12th two ProTour races will be held in Quebec City and Montreal. (www.protourquebecmontreal.com) The circuits, which wind through the city centres are hilly and hard. In 1974 the World Championships were held in Montreal on roughly the same 12 km circuit which we will race on in a few weeks. The major difficulty on the course is the climb up Mont Royal– a tough ascent which shadows the city centre. We will climb it 16 times.

In 1974 Eddy Merckx dominated and won the race. The World title was the final race he needed to achieve the triple crown of cycling: victories in the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and World Championships. In 1976 the same course was used for the Olympic Road Race and then through the late 80’s and early 90’s Montreal held a yearly pro men’s World Cup. Through the 90’s, and until last year, the city hosted the Women’s World Cup on the Mont Royal circuit.

As I was looking through the piles of photos my father has from a lifetime in cycling I found a few he and a friend, Gil Smith, took at the Worlds in Montreal. Some of the pictures are from the track events and some are from the road race.

Several people have asked me about cycling in Girona, Spain. Below is a travel article I wrote for  Canadian Cycling Magazine. I have also included some photos which my wife, Dede Barry, and friend, Jordi Cantal, took.

In 1972 my father opened a bike shop with his good friend Mike Brown in the center of Toronto named Bicyclesport. At the time, the bike shop was unique in a city of supermarket bikes as it catered to the serious cyclist. They built custom Mariposa frames in the frame shop, they repaired frames, there was a crew of top mechanics and the sales room was clean, crisp and colourful.

I grew up in the shop. From a newborn to a teenager I spent a significant portion of my life amongst the bikes.  The mechanics taught me how to fix my bike, I worked on my frames with my Dad as soon as I was old enough to hold a torch, and the new bikes, which lined the showroom walls were candy to my young eyes. The shop was a warm and welcoming environment in which to grow up. Being from the UK, my Dad always had the kettle on and the cookie tin full.

Almost four decades later, the shop is now closed and my Dad is retired. But, he still maintains a workshop, which has also become somewhat of a museum. He restores bikes from his significant collection and friends constantly drop by to have a cup of tea, chat about cycling, tinker with the bikes, or page through the old cycling volumes.

The teapot is still insulated by a cozy knitted by a mechanic’s mother. She gave it to the shop for the opening as her fifteen-year-old son Ted, who started out as ‘the shop boy’, had been given the job of making tea. Being from England she understood the importance of a good cup of tea and a good cozy to keep the pot warm. It is a simple woolen hat striped with the world championship bands. It has become a bit of symbol for the shop and has somehow weathered the years of use. Cycling brings unique people from all over the world together and many of those gathered in the shop around the teapot.

Attached are some photos of my father’s large collection of bikes, books and parts. The photos only capture a small part of the vast collection. The shop still feels like a home to me and, I think, to hundreds of people who share a common passion for the bike and have sat around the shop and talked over tea and a biscuit.

For more images of the bikes and shop see: www.bikespecialties.com, mariposabicycles.com and www.bicyclespecialties.blogspot.com

Select pages of Le Métier. The Seasons of a Professional Cyclist.

On a cold rainy winter day, while I was climbing a mountain in solitude, ideas were floating through my head as my heart rate increased with the effort. I thought about the ride. I was alone on a road in the pouring rain. It was a moment in the life of a cyclist that the public doesn’t see. There are thousands of such moments.

Camille McMillan, a photographer who is also a good friend, and I had just finished working on a project together. His photos are unique and we had worked well together.

At the top of the mountain I pulled over and sent him an SMS. “I think we should work on a book that will tell the story of a pro cyclist’s life. The book will follow him through the year. With your photos and my words I think we can tell a story that hasn’t been told and give people an understanding of what the life of a pro cyclist is all about.” Moments later he wrote back. “I’m in.”

Before he became a professional photographer and I a professional cyclist, we were childhood friends. Camille’s father, Rhett, rode in a local club in London with my father. They were best friends and with cycling as a common passion. Camille and I grew up immersed in bike magazines and books. And, as a result of all of that, we see the sport similarly. Due to that childhood friendship there was a level of trust, which allowed us to work more honestly and intimately.

Camille followed me as often as possible through the cycling season. He spent time in my home, in the hotel room, in the team bus, and followed the training rides. Many of his photos capture the moments in a cyclist’s life that are routine to us but are exceptionally abnormal to most people.

To attain the level of fitness necessary each rider in the professional peloton has committed his life to his bike. The roadside spectators, the media and the television audience, who watch us from a distance, cannot see the professional cyclist’s commitment, suffering and sacrifice. We have told this story in Le Métier. The seasons of a professional cyclist.

The book is on sale now: http://rouleur.cc/le-metier and will be released 29.04.2010. Below are some snaps Camille took late last week of the printing presses in action.

Here are some pictures from this weeks training leading up to Paris-Roubaix. I’ve also included a few pictures of Flecha’s Roubaix specific bike, notice the seatstays.

Here’s a gallery from the past few days. You will find a few pictures from before Flanders, and then the task of prepping tires for Roubaix.

The Tour of Flanders course is extremely technical and for riders who don’t live near the course and know the roads well, a reconnaissance ride prior to the race is vital . The fight for position before the cobbled sections is as crucial as a rider’s skills on the cobbles, as the peloton splits on the small roads due to bottlenecks and crashes. Most teams ride the final 100 km of the course prior to the race to preview the stones and find the smoothest and quickest line. We rode the course the day after Dwaars door Vlaanderen–a midweek semi-Classic.

Most of the boys were tired from a hard and well fought race while Edvald Boasson Hagen and I had fresh legs from a few days of rest post Milan Sanremo. The weather was abnormally warm for Belgium which made the countryside all the more beautiful. This weekend will be big: E3 Prijs-Vlaanderen-Harelbeke and Gent Wevelgem. The team is prepared for a tough battle–rain is in the forecast and the temperatures will drop.