From 20 to 27 September, the world's best road cyclists will race on the streets of Montréal in search of rainbow jerseys of UCI World Champion, echoing the battles fought in the Canadian city half a century ago. The UCI Road World Championships return to the city that made history in 1974, when they were held outside Europe for the first time in stifling mid-summer heat. That event made its mark on many levels, including Eddy Merckx achieving the Triple Crown: overall victory in the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and UCI World Championships road race the same season.
From the Belgian “Cannibal” edging out rival Raymond Poulidor (FRA), to Geneviève Gambillon offering France a gold medal by winning a thrilling sprint finish, the Men Elite and Women Elite races were packed with icons whose legends still shine bright today.
Even before the racing had started, the 1974 UCI Road World Championships marked a turning point in the event's history. From the inaugural edition in Denmark in 1921 right through to 1973, the Championships had never ventured beyond Europe in full. Montréal was the first time the complete programme, professional and women's road races included, crossed the Atlantic. Only once before had any part of the Championships left the continent: in 1968, the amateur road race and team time trial, the two Olympic events of the day, were staged in Montevideo, Uruguay, while the professional and women's races stayed in Europe, in Imola (Italy).
"The most important sports event before the Olympic Games"
An advertisement in Canadian newspapers invited the population of the city to the occasion: " The world is coming to see us... will you?” The rendezvous was the University of Montréal Sports Centre, which prepared to welcome "800 champions from 50 nations", with the UCI Track World Championships staged at the same time, in what would be "the most important sports event before the Olympic Games" to be held in the city two years later. From 14 to 25 August 1974, Montréal was the centre of the cycling world, and the action more than matched the scenic setting and demanding course around Mount Royal.
The circuit wound almost through the heart of the city, yet with three climbs per lap it offered the riders no respite. Twenty-one 12.5 km laps, totalling 262.5 km, notably included the long climb through Mount Royal Park, known as the Côte du Belvédère, and the shorter ascent of the University Campus climb.
The week built towards the Elite road races. First, Poland's Janusz Kowalski won the amateur road race ahead of his compatriot Ryszard Szurkowski, who would go on to win silver in the team time trial at the 1976 Olympic Games. Then, Sweden's Lennart Fagerlund, Bernt Johansson, Tord Filipsson and Sven-Åke Nilsson took the rainbow jerseys in the team time trial. Following this, attention turned to the Elite road races: the women on Saturday, the men on Sunday, cheered on by an estimated 200,000 spectators.
“It was a really beautiful Championship,” remembers Geneviève Gambillon half a century on from her victory, after Montréal was awarded the 2026 UCI Road World Championships. “The atmosphere was incredible”.
Her counterpart in the men's race, Eddy Merckx, recalls them as “an incredible memory. It was my third [UCI] World Championship victory after an incredibly busy 1974 season, where I won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France”.
History that still resonates
“Initially, they said the course was suited for sprinters, but Mount Royal turned out to be something quite different from a sprinter's course. It was a very tough race, with [Bernard] Thévenet leading a long breakaway,” Merckx recalls. His teammates drove a hard chase behind the French star – who would go on to take his first of two overall Tour de France victories the next year –, and the punishing course took its toll: only 18 of the 70 starters reached the finish. Merckx completed the course in 6h 52' 22", at an average of just over 38 km/h. The following year, Thévenet would dethrone Merckx in the Tour de France, but in Montréal it was the Belgian star who had the final say: “I was able to attack and only Poulidor was able to follow me, but I managed to beat him in the sprint”. Behind the leaders, France's Mariano Martínez took the bronze. His name still resonates in the sport: his son Miguel became an Olympic cross-country mountain bike champion, and his grandson Lenny races in the professional road cycling peloton today.
Merckx thus became the first rider to win the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France and the UCI Road World Championships in the same year, a feat matched only by Stephen Roche in 1987 and Tadej Pogačar in 2024. Already crowned in 1967 and 1971, he was also the third of five three-time winners of the Men Elite road race at the UCI Road World Championships, after Italian Alfredo Binda (1927, 1930, 1932) and Belgian Rik Van Steenbergen (1949, 1956, 1957), and before Spain’s Oscar Freire (1999, 2001, 2004) and Slovak Peter Sagan (2015, 2016, 2017).
The women's event was also marked by exhilarating racing, that Gambillon recalls was suited for strong riders. “The difficulty of the course, combined with the level of the riders, made it really special,” recalls the winner, who had edged out Latvia's Baiba Caune, representing the USSR at the time, and the Netherlands' Keetie van Oosten-Hage. Already crowned UCI World Champion two years earlier in Gap (France), Gambillon was a role model for the French champions who followed, among them France’s Josiane Bost, winner of the Women Elite road race at the 1977 UCI Road World Championships, and multiple UCI World Champion Jeannie Longo.
The legacy of the first UCI Road World Championships held outside Europe is clear in the vitality of the Canadian cycling scene, including the UCI WorldTour races the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec and the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal. Canada was also the first step on a path that, half a century later, took the Championships to Africa for the first time, to Kigali,Rwanda in 2025. Now the story returns to where it first went global, as Montréal prepares to crown a new generation of UCI World Champions